Francesco Guicciardini Quotes

As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo.

These white people think this country belongs to them—they don't realize that they are only in charge right now because there's more of them than there are of us. The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedly-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.

… the process of social change was not merely a matter of new inventions pressing on old institutions: it was a matter of new classes displacing old.

The powerful don't make revolutions

When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.

There is no degree of human suffering which in and of itself is going to bring about change. Only organisation can change things.

It's going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth once they inherit it.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Some of those men in power, we just have to change their faces because we're not going to change their minds.

When I read things like the foundations of capitalism are shattering, I'm like, maybe we need that. Maybe we need some time where we're walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the sides.

A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

Those above are going down, those below are going up.

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

A revolution has taken place within the government but it has not yet penetrated civil society.

The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place.

… many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change.

The Arab world’s wave of change was a century in the making, Why expect its effects to become clear in the space of months

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

A revolution is generally only evolution--an explosive sequence of events crowded into a short space of time, but leaving more of the ancient regime untouched than usually is at first apparent.

They are as blind to some of the tendencies of the time as the French Noblese was before the French Revolution.