Chris Abani Quotes

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority!

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

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

It is authority that provokes revolution....

Power Concedes Nothing

Revolution by the have-nots has a way of inducing a moral revelation among the haves.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.

The powerful don't make revolutions

I've bowed to you for too long, and if I continue to do it, we will all suffer.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and its gone. But the people are so cowed and disorganised. A few might take the opportunity to protest, but it'll just be a voice crying in the wilderness. Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it.

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

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.