Dorothy Day Quotes

Political evils must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

I'm a harsh critic of the status quo.

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

People of my generation in Portugal fell into the magic potion of political ideas. What was very funny about this revolution was that it did not bring wealth to the Portuguese. But it brought language, ideas. You'd go to the fish market, and all the women who were selling fish would call each other fascist, communist.

If revolution insists upon overturning established order, let other peoples make the tragic experiment. There is no place for it in America.

The First Law of Class Warfare: Once inequalities develop, the upper classes can, with relative ease, drastically reduce the probability of success for any equalizing challenges to the system.

We are revolutionists from head to foot; revolutionists we were; revolutionists we are; revolutionists we shall remain until the very end.

I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

In the Europe which was created by the Second World War, divided into two blocks, each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste, collective faith does not exist.

I don't believe in professional dissidents. I think it's just a phase, like adolescence.

Radicalism is as British as tea and cakes, as much a part of our make-up as monarchy and football. It will never have its own jubilees, palaces or honours system.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

The status quo is simply unacceptable.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

We revolutionaries acknowledge the right to revolution when we see that the situation is no longer tolerable, that it has become a frozen. Then we have the right to overthrow it.

Progressive change in this country has never come from above.

If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

The revolution... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know, And things need changin' everywhere you go

Capitalism is so successful economically that it creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

There's a battle outside raging It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls for the times they are a-changing.