Henry Giroux Quotes

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

When the proletariat is not organized enough to conduct a successful struggle against the political power of the ruling class, it must be trained for such a purpose by steady and hostile instigation.

Older Jews think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and see themselves as siding with the working class and the poor, so they continue to vote the way they do.

Socialism as such from its very origins is a workers' system, and when there occur deviations, it is workers that react first.

But we look back now, and we realize the Great Society was not a success.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.

The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform.

Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.

The 1890s was a decade when life began to change in urban America. Modern conveniences that we now take for granted came into use; women's roles became less restrictive; and San Francisco, a port city with influences from all over the world, was a lively place in which to reside.

(Referring to General Hugh Johnson, administrator of the National Recovery Administration:)) ... a comic opera cream puff.

The formation of the smallest worker’s organization will for the history writers of the future be more important than the battle of Sadova

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

Whatever has been done in Western Europe to bring about more justice, more security, more educational opportunities, more welfare and more state responsibility for the poor and the helpless, could never has been achieved without the pressure if socialist ideologies and socialist movements, for all their naiveties and illusions.

The big policy wins of the New Deal were actually offered as compromises. Because the alternative seemed to be revolution.

The unraveling of America's long mid-century domestic consensus, which ran from about 1941 to 1966, had begun earlier, under Lyndon B. Johnson.

Roosevelt's New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all.

My life was transformed by the Labour government of 1945. It was transformative for millions of people like me, you know - education, the health service. It was proof that politics can make life better for people; that a social dream can become a social reality by the power of government.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.

We must make democracy the popular creed...If we should fail to do this, our people are bound to suffer... That is what my father said. It is the reason why I am participating in this struggle.

The British inclined more towards the feudal mentality, the feudal structures rather than the more radical progressive elements who would re-shape society and institute pretty egalitarian systems of governance with opportunity for even disadvantaged people and so I found that decolonisation was not just the end of political struggle in Nigeria.

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters -- then we are for it!

Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary. Whomever sides with the revolutionary people in words only but acts otherwise is a revolutionary in speech. Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense.

The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.