John Henrik Clarke Quotes

Power wears out those who do not have it.

This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.

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

Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Either you're the one erasing or you're the one being erased.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.

Justice often means taking power from some who have it and giving it to some who do not.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

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

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of the half of society over which the other half has power—from the exercises of the right of the strongest.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

The people who exercise the power are not always the same people over whom it is exercised.

All colonies are oppressed peoples.

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than an hundred against it

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.