Abbie Hoffman Quotes

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

You've got to get people to believe that change is possible... You have to show that you can fight things successfully even if you don't win.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.

And I have a message for the liberals and the defenders of the status quo: we're just getting started.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

An oppressed people will always rise.

There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive…. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world, I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that-which is the foundation of activism.

Disobey the rules; ask for more; leave your wretchedness behind; organize with your brothers and sisters; never accept the hand of fate.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

A movement that doesn't produce a backlash isn't much of a movement at all.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. And then you win.

It was imperative to make common cause with the oppressed in order to secure a new system opposed to the ambitions and governing habits of the oppressors.

The world will not change overnight, and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them.

The Black Panther Party stood up and said that we don't care what anybody says. We don't think fighting fire with fire is best; we think you fight fire with water best.

Movements don't die, because struggle doesn't die.

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

If things aren't working for us, it is our duty to rise up.

'Rise Up' is very necessary. Point blank.

It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them... 'Black Messiah' is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.

I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was, Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose.

Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.