Popular Mobilization Quotes

Political leaders will never take risks unless the people push them to take risks.

In the next few months of this year, a broad democratic movement must be set going throughout the country, with the immediate objective of completely democratizing the national assembly and the constitution. The second matter concerns freedom of speech, assembly and association for the people. Without such freedom, it will be impossible to carry out the democratic reconstruction of the political system, mobilize the people for the war of resistance and victoriously defend the motherland and recover the lost territories …

The American people... want change. They want big ideas, big reform.

Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.

The revolution is on the verge of winning. We cannot crush it but perhaps we can strangle it …. Perhaps it will be possible to divert the revolutionary energies into the legal channels of an election campaign.

In Western Europe we still have, in many countries, leaders of the type of the Second International; here we are still seeking the right leaders, those that do not try to dominate the masses, that do not betray them; and as long as we do not find these leaders, we want to do all things from below

The only way back toward a democracy and economy that work for the majority is for most of us to get politically active once again, becoming organized and mobilized.

While you cannot deliver policies without principles, you cannot deliver principles without having power. You have quickly to move to a stage where, emphasising your principles, you build a programme, then call for popular support.

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.

We are doing politics differently - smart, populist, political movement.

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

Ordinary people - churches, too - have a role to force politicians to respond. Governments are not impressed with theories, but governments are impressed with people who change their minds about things.

The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.

Every Government official dreams of going directly to the people with arguments framed by that official.

[Our movement] needs to look like a grass roots effort.

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.