Mike Yaconelli Quotes

I'm a radical reformist, because between where we are and where I want to go there's a great deal of work, and I won't see the end of this.

Great institutions can only be reformed by stealth or by revolution.

I think that in order to make revolution, you need to make reforms, but you should make these reforms with revolution in mind.

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.

Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to.

I want a prepared, organized, orderly and resistless revolution.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

I intend to go up there and kick the system over, not try to change it.

I am still committed to building a movement to end mass incarceration, but I will not do it with blinders on. If all we do is end mass incarceration, this movement will not have gone nearly far enough.

We want to destroy everything, not rebuild on the same rubble. We have different ideas. It is like any work. You have to have a clean slate. Then, you have a programme, a new way of thinking. It is a way of thinking. Not a restoration. Parties out. Citizens instead of parties.

It takes a revolution, to create a solution

The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day

I do see myself as aiming to foment some kind of revolution.

For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.

I get up every morning and think, today I'm going to make a difference. Today I'm going to end capitalism. Today I'm going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I'm back to work tomorrow, and that's the only way you can do it.

No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims.

I think that revolution means change. And if somebody feels like there's nothing wrong, everything's great even when it ain't, why would they ask for a revolution? Just stick the tubes into me and just pump away.

We need our radicals.

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

Revolution begins with one step

I think it's a sign that the establishment is going to have to change. For too long they never thought about the average person, because the average person is not organized.

I think young people are recognizing the power of institutions, and we have to really dismantle a lot of the stigma and shame, culturally, but we also have to change things in terms of how government and institutions deal with this.

First, what is a revolution? Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration [of] what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, and the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program. You may change your goal and you may change your mind.