socio-political change Quotes

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

People look at the future and see a black hole. They look at climate change and see an ecological crisis. They look at their leaders corrupted by money and see a political crisis. They wonder if they'll ever be able to pay off their student loan or own a house. Given this ecological, political and financial crisis, what they want is a different future. Their fundamental demand is a different regime to provide that future.

If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life.

I'm fighting for people who cannot wait for changes, and I'm not making promises that I cannot keep.

And as long as America must choose, that long will there be a need and a place for the Democratic Party. We Democrats can run on our record but we cannot rest on it. We will win if we continue to take the initiative and if we carry the message of hope and action throughout the country. Alexander Smith once said, 'A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.' Let us continue to plant, and our children shall reap the harvest. That is our destiny as Democrats.

[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation - that is what makes it revolutionary - but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims - that is what makes it realistic.

I mean everybody knows there's something wrong with the world and if you read left wing politicians or deconstructionists or thoughtful historians they will offer thoughtful critiques of our situation. But the question is, you know, the Tolstoyian question; 'What is to be done?'

Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

The restoration of property would be a complicated, arduous and presumably a lengthy business; the transformation of a Capitalist Society into a Communist one needs nothing but the extension of existing conditions.

When we are fighting for huge stakes - we're fighting for the future - future of the planet in terms of climate change. We're fighting for the future of American democracy.

Women are young at politics, but they are old at suffering; soon they will learn that through politics they can prevent some kinds of suffering.

If it is presumed that the Kenyans will democratise in order to eat the peanuts of development assistance from the European Union... it would be a big mistake.

There are enormous opportunities to work for a world that is more free, peaceful and just.

I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and I have such strong feelings about what must be done.

We are not the ones who create revolutions. It is the imperialist system and its allies, internal allies, the ones who create revolution.

Education must become central to any viable notion of politics willing to imagine a life and future outside of casino capitalism.

When the buying stops, the killing can too.

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.

Without a movement pressing for change, there's little hope. We've got to work the political system to make this happen fast. The physics and chemistry are daunting. The resources on the other side are very large.

Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term.

There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I'm hopeful that increased awareness of the issues in Africa will bring about a new wave of progress and activism among young people everywhere.

I decided to go into politics because my children are growing up, and I became worried about the ways things are being handled in this country. I felt there's a lost generation of people who feel misrepresented, and that they're doing their best for the country but the country is not doing its best for them. We are all looking at our children and wondering whether or not they will see their future in Israel. They looked at the country before the last elections and saw it becoming more and more Orthodox. There was a strong sense of unfairness.

now the profile of our country looks a little less hard nosed / but that picket line persisted and that clinic's since been closed / they keep pounding their fists on reality hoping it will break / but I don't think there's a one of us leads a life free of mistakes