Mao Zedong Quotes

Lenin strove constantly to get the people to understand that the leaders could not do everything for them, that they them-selves, with their own hands, would have to build a new life and defend their own state; in this he proved himself to be a real people's leader, able to show the people the way forward and induce them to take the first step forward fully conscious of their aim, instead of following blindly behind the leaders.

The Arab Spring is kind of a perfect model for how people are going to use technology to act collectively in their own interest in the future. There's never been a revolution that was coordinated by social media to the degree that the Arab Spring was.

The power of the masses can influence any government in the world. The power of the masses can elect an official, start a revolution, and drive history. Nelson Mandela did it alone from his prison cell. Ghandi did it lying down. Egypt did it singing songs.

To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.

Fellow Peasants: No hand will after this day be above your hand… You are the producers. Yours is the power.

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.

Everything would be alright if everything was put back in the hands of the people, and we're going to have to put it back in the hands of the people.

Progressive, radical, or even revolutionary change has always come from below.

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

Now technology gives you a chance to help organize. You don't have to wait for either the inefficiency or the corruption. You don't have to wait for government. You can actually self-organize and build institutions bottom up.

To rebuild confidence in the power of people working together to create something better, we must give people the power to do precisely that for themselves.

No one can stop a mass gathering of the people.

The reason that I started the Black Futures Lab is because I have some clarity about what I think needs to happen in relationship to electoral organizing. It's not a destination. It is a set of tools that we use to engage people that we care about, en masse, around issues that are important to us.

When ordinary people come together, they can upset the mighty.

We've all got to get together and demand something better out of our government and out of each other. We've got a system that's making us working harder, and isn't giving us satisfaction. We've got to sit down and decide what the hell we really want to be as human beings.

But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet --!

One citizen, or a few, may be powerless if all the rest are determined to benefit from the imposition of unjust supranational rules. But this excuse cannot work for large numbers. Just imagine 10 million US citizens saying in unison: "I am just one powerless citizen. There is nothing I can do to change my government's policies!"

The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.

There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.

The efforts of governments alone will never be enough. In the end, the people must choose and the people must help themselves.

All of you, wherever you are: in your spiny cities, or your one-bump towns. Find it, the hard stuff, the links of metal and chink, the fragments of stone filling your stomach. And pull, and pull, and pull. I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls.

Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can’t succeed without your help.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.