L. Neil Smith Quotes

Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side.

A boycott is directed against a policy and the institutions which support that policy either actively or tacitly. Its aim is not to reject, but to bring about change.

It is not leaders who make movements; it is movements that make leaders.

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.

Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.

You have to be careful how you're using the word boycott.

58% of the American public are with us. We're preaching to the choir, but the choir's not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.

Special interests and opponents have figured out how easy it is to disrupt town halls and get their own message out. The days of the truly free-form town halls may be over.

I believe boycotts are wrong.

Ours is a country where anything can be accomplished if enough people get angry... because, in America, we act on our collective anger.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.

For any movement to gain momentum, it must start with a small action. This action becomes multiplied by the masses, and is made tangible when leadership changes course due to the weight of the movement's voice.

Here is what is needed for Occupy Wall Street to become a force for change: a clear, and clearly expressed, objective. Or two.

I think there's a mystery about what a social movement is.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

People can care about changing the world. But what gets them to act is pressure and social reward.

My individual power is limited. I want to use my high-profile way to wake people up to take action together to do good things. I can only awake them with my performance art and creativity.

The monied interests are doing what they do best - making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best - use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.

In 2012, I see the potential for people to come together, huge moments of political and social engagement where elections are part of the strategy for change, but not the end goal and not the only thing that matters.

Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure through broad organized aggressive mass action.

Civil disobedients are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.

Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.