Revolutionary Potential Quotes

All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.

… revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal

I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.

I believe that if you have revolutionary potential, you must make the world a better place and use it.

Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.

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.

In order to make the changes work, the majority of members of society that has entered into the changes must wake up every morning with a feeling of the great historical moment, with the feeling of something big and extraordinary.

We believe the currently one cannot speak of a revolutionary situation, just as there is no concrete possibilities of an immediate and comprehensive assumption of power by the people.

Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it.

Even revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create these germs or create new worlds out of nothing.

The opportunities for future growth are everywhere. Seeing the future has nothing to do with speculating about what might happen. Rather, you must understand the revolutionary potential of what is already happening.

I studied revolutions at university, and I think each revolution must begin with a moment of 'no.' If enough people have that moment at the same time, it becomes a movement.

The image of blacks usually is one of people who are suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty. The idea of them as agents and activists - as starting revolutions - does not exist in most people's minds. And I think it's very, very important that folks understand how much America was founded on the enslavement of blacks, and how the resistance of blacks to that enslavement has been the spark plug for so many important developments.

I work in the field of art, and you know how during a period of Marxist ideology, fewer people are inclined to believe in the power of the culture as a whole: they believe in the revolutionary potential of economics, class struggle theory.. ..Therefore it's time to show that art means the power of creativity, and it's time to define art in a larger way, to include science and religion too..(1973

The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on the surface.

Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest-in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. 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.

Anton Pannekoek didn't encourage radical workers and other activists of the anti-Bolshevik left to see revolutionary potential in his work in astronomy, for the simple reason that he was honest, and knew there was none to speak of.

I feel I understand now why, whenever there are revolutions, Shakespeare is what people turn to. Because whenever a society is on the cusp, about to become something else, they find themselves in Shakespeare.

I believe in the sacred mission of art to change history.

Where's the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows. The day before every revolution that's ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.

He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive.