Chris Hedges Quotes

The people in this country have always been afraid of power. Now, maybe the powerful are becoming a little afraid of the people.

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

Hume's paradox does hold: power is in the hands of the governed. If they refuse to accept it, you're in trouble, no matter how many guns you have.

But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?

There are two fairly standard approaches to political power used by those who seek it. Some seek power with the assumption that the citizenry are the source of legitimacy and are to be treated with respect. Others concentrate on identifying whatever insecurities there are within the citizenry and on exploiting them.'

Fear of the consequences of the masses’ indignation often induces the class holding parliamentary power to make concessions which the masses would not otherwise have obtained

The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.'

Government should fear the people, not the other way around.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.

It was spine tingling, actually, when you saw how people kept saying, "Release Nelson Mandela," and meaning really, "Release all of our political prisoners."

If the resistance is going to bring Trump down, it will require Democrats to follow the people, not the other way around. My hope is that the Democrats will realize where their power lies, and will start taking their cues from the people on the ground and not the other way.

When the democratic deficit is so enormous, people are left with very little option but to take peaceful, non-violent direct action.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

The establishment will irritate you - pull your beard, flick your face - to make you fight. Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humor.

[T]he people as ultimate sovereigns, retain the ultimate power - and even the duty - to overthrow any government that fails to respect their authority.

Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.

The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.

We are well aware of what Donald Trump has done in his first 100 days. And people are organized all over the place to fight back.

It takes truth, and it takes speaking truth to power, but because the stranglehold is so tight it seems to take something else - a real political threat.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people.

Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.