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Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

http://www.John-Lennon.com

Američka intervencija u Iraku, koja je zahvatila bespomoćne, bila je groteskna.Ali ne smijemo ignorirati činjenicu da su SAD morale minimalizirati civilne žrtve.Nije to bilo zato što imperijalni vođe ovoga stoljeća imaju veća srca I plemenitije duše od vođa prošloga stoljeća.To je bilo tako jer su ih socijalni pokreti naveli na strah od reperkusija još gorega klanja.Ne vidim veće prepreke danas nego što su bile u prošlosti.Vidim slične institucije onima iz prošlosti, ali također i mnogo svjesnije stanovništvo, kod kuće kao i širom svijeta.Pokreti se više ne bave samo perifernim simptomima nego cijelim sistemom.Problem edukacije i širenja svijesti sve se manje bazira na problemu uvjeravanja ljudi da postoji nepravda, a sve više na približavanju ljudi u prihvaćanju zajedničke nove vizije.To mijenja naš zadatak i predstavlja velik napredak.

- Michael Albert
From Despair to Revolution, 6/19/0

Michael Albert

Being activist is not rolling rocks up hills, or digging useless ditches, or blowing into the wind, or opposing gravity. It is part of the single most important, courageous, and productive undertaking in all human history, one with deep roots and a winning future. Do those who think resigning makes sense really want to say that the abolitionists were wrong, that workers in daily struggles for better wages and conditions have all been wrong, that the advocates of women and blacks and Latinos being people were wrong, that seeking liberation has been and will be wrong? Do they really want to assert that wage slavery is forever? That it violates nature and reason that human beings should control their own lives rather than most people being subject to the domineering will of a very few? Do they really want to say people can't conceive and implement systems in which poverty and starvation and death by preventable disease and denial of dignity and stature are eradicated? On what grounds, do they proclaim such pessimism? Once upon a time, when Pharaohs whipped slaves into building their tombs, or when emperors dragooned peasants into fighting lions for imperial entertainment, or when slave owners lynched growers into subordination, was it desirable to resign from opposition? So why is now any different? Does someone, somewhere, suddenly have a crystal ball which says that no matter how hard humanity struggles, there will be no better future?

Source: From Despair to Revolution, 6/19/03

Noam Chomsky

"If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time."

Voltaire

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

Dante Alighieri :

A great flame follows a little spark.

Source: The Divine Comedy

Helder Camara:

When I give food to the poor, they call me a Saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist

Publilius Syrus c.1 BCE :

He whom many fear, has himself many to fear.

Vinoba Bhave(www.markshep.com/nonviolence/GT_Vinoba.html ):

“We do not aim at doing mere acts of kindness, but at creating a Kingdom of Kindness.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Michael Albert:

History is not over. It is, instead, ours to make.

Michael Albert :

Finally, we also need some clarity about violence. It's simple. The state has a monopoly of it. What that means is that there is no way for the public, most particularly in developed first world societies, to compete on the field of violence with their governments. That ought to be utterly and blatantly obvious. Our strong suit is information, facts, justice, disobedience, and especially numbers. In sum: politics. Their strong suit is lying and especially exerting military power. A contest of escalating violence is a contest we are doomed to lose. A contest in which numbers and commitment and increasingly militant non-violent activism confronts state power is a contest we can win. Yes, the impetus to manifest anger is powerful. But there is nothing courageous or strategic about charting a path directly into the lion's mouth. Our tactical sense must couple to strategic plans aimed at winning. We can have teach-ins. We can have rallies. We can have marches. We can have strikes. We can build our own blockades. We can utilize all manner of creativity and playfulness amidst our dissent. We can go out and talk to people. We can obstruct. We can destroy property when doing so sends a clear and coherent message. We can hurl back tear gas canisters in self defense and tear down walls and other obstacles to remain mobile. But to attack the police with the intent of doing bodily harm, whether with stones or Molotov cocktails, simply invites further escalation of their violence. It does nothing to hinder elite agendas but instead propels and legitimates them. Anger-fed violence is hard avoid in some situations, I well know. But avoid it we must.

Source: New Targets

Michael Albert :

To win we need to generate a trajectory of activism that elites cannot repress away or manipulatively derail, and which they also can't calmly abide. That is the logic of social change in the near and even middle term. But what is it that threatens elites, that can't be repressed away, and that can't be manipulated off course? The only answer I know of is rapidly growing numbers of dissidents, varied diversifying focuses of their dissent, and steadily escalating commitment and militancy of their tactics. To succeed, we need not just one of these, nor even two, but all three….

Source: New Targets

Michael Albert :

A movement is growing that can persist to fight again and again, amassing strength as it goes. By the standard of winning big changes every day, this movement will lose, lose, lose, for awhile. But by the standard of daily growing bigger, broader, more committed, and more competent, it will win, win, win. And as a result of those continuing achievements, it will begin engineering a trajectory of smaller and then larger changes in society that will each in turn improve people's lives and create conditions for still more improvements, right up to establishing an alternative world we can all celebrate.

Camus Albert:

"I rebel,therefore,we exist"

Source: The Rebel

Saul Alinsky :

The pursuit of happiness is never-ending; happiness lies in the pursuit.

Source: "Rules for Radicals"

Saint Augustine :

"Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."

Harry Belefonte:

"How can you sit so comfortably with the indifference that you're evidencing with this tragedy (famine in Africa), when you could, in fact, take some part of that tragedy and fix it and make a difference? Not all of it. Don't sit there and be overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. Just pick out that portion which is yours, and kick butt. Go out there and make a difference. Change it. Change it. CHANGE IT."

Arnold Bennett :

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

Alexander Blok :

With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole conscience, listen to the Revolution….This is the music everyone who has ears should hear.

William Blum:

Sam Smith, a journalist in Washington, whom some of you are familiar with, in his new book makes the point that "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it." He then asks: Knowing what we know now about how certain things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on? We don't know what surprises history has in store for us when we give history a little shove, just as history can give each of us a little shove personally.

Source: American Empire for Dummies, 10/21/02

William Blum :

“A Southern physician, Samuel Cartwright, argued that many of the slaves [in America] suffered from a form of mental illness, which he called ‘drapetomania’, diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. In the second half of the 20th-centruy, this illness, in the Third World, has usually been called ‘communism’.”

Source: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

Jim Bond :

Our [the working class] weakness is not knowing our strength

Source: Line from the poem: Listen I have no power and can do nothing but cry Listen then those with power hear my cry Children are dying and I know not why You with power can stop it if you try We without power individually have none Yet collectively we are second to none Our weakness is not knowing our strength Therefore we can change it if we try jIM bOND May 15, 2002

Billy Bragg:

I'm not a political songwriter. I'm just an honest songwriter.

Bertolt Brecht :

Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon

Rita Mae Brown:

The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.

Edmund Burke :

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burk e :

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

John Cage :

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

Italo Calvino:

There are two ways not to suffer from the inferno we are all living in every day. The first suits most people: accept the inferno and become part of it to the point where you don't even see it any more. The second is riskier and requires constant attention and willingness to learn: seek out and know how to recognize whoever and whatever, in the midst of the inferno, is not inferno, and help them last, give them space

Cezar Chavez:

"We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice. But if you give yourself totally to the non-violent struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone. And in giving of yourself you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love."

"When any person suffers for someone in greater need, that person is a human."

"Violence just hurts those who are already hurt...Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it."

Cezar Chavez(www.ufw.org/cecstory.htm )

Noam Chomsky:

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.

Noam Chomsky :

There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it only goes skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed. This is naturally less true of the better-educated and ‘more sophisticated’ (that is, more effectively indoctrinated) groups who are both the agents, and often the most deluded victims of the propaganda system.

No one can fail to see that to the extent that he restricts his protest, to the extent that he rejects actions that are open to him, he accepts complicity in what the government does.

Winston Churchill:

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

Cicero :

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Zack De La Rocha:

"Silence, something about silence makes me sick, 'cause silence can be violence, sorta like a slit wrist..."

Eugene Debs :

"If it had not been for the discontent of a few who had not been satisfied with their condition we would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization."

Eugene Debs :

I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone."

...years ago I recognised my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free...

Source: speaking before the Federal Court in Cleveland, Ohio, 14th September 1918.(čuveni predsjednik Socijalističke Partije SAD-a, zatvoren na 10 godina zatvora zbog pacifističkog govora) - www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/EugeneDebsSocialism.html

Eugene Debs :

I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it.

John Donne :

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is part of the Continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed into the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, beacause I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Frederick Douglas:

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

Thomas A. Edison :

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.

Thomas Edison :

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Albert Einstein:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing

Albert Einstein:

Precious few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Albert Einstein:

The world cannot get out of its current state of crisis with the same thinking that got it there in the first place.

Mahatma Gandhi

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

Mahatma Ghandi

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. "The first principle of non-violence action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating."

Mahatma Gandhi

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Mohandas Gandhi

Kahlil Gibran :

Yesterday we bowed for kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today, we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Source: Children of Gods, Scions of Apes

Paulo Friere :

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral

Emma Goldman

And you, are you so forgetful of your past, is there no echo in your soul of your poets' songs, your dreamers' dreams, your rebels' calls?

Meg Greenfield

Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara

"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine."

George Gurdjieff

If today is like yesterday/Tomorrow will be like today,/If you want tomorrow to be different/You must make today different.

Edward S. Herman .

While the U.S. and its allies have armed the neo-fascist elites of the Third World to the teeth, and saturated them with counterinsurgency weaponry and training, long-term elite control of the underlying populations is by no means assured. The abuse of Third World majorities in the empire is so corrupt, inept and visionless, that explosions and loss of control are highly likely in many states over the next several decades. The voiceless majorities can be helped by outsiders in many ways: among them, maximum world-wide exposure of the actual impact of the West on these peoples; strenuous efforts to stem the huge flow of aid and support to official terrorists; and helping to create an ideological and political environment that will make open intervention difficult when explosions do occur.

Source: with Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, 1979, preface, p. xii

Joe Hill :

Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!

Source: Letter from prison before he was executed

Thomas Jefferson:

"Every generation needs a new revolution"

Thomas Jefferson :

A little revolution, now and then, is a healthy thing. It is as natural as lightning.

Thomas Jeferson :

"I like the dreams of the future, better than the history of the past, so good night, I will dream on."

Martin Luther King :

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism

Martin Luther King :

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored...I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.

Martin Luther King Jr.

In the end, we will remember not only the actions of our enemies, but silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Krishnamurti :

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society

Francois de La Rochefoucauld .

It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

James Larkin :

The great only appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.

John Lujan :

"So many windmills, So few Quixotes"

Rosa Luxemburg :

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

John MacLean :

No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.

James Michener

An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

George Monbiot

The corporations are powerful only because we have allowed them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship, and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize the reins of government. Their power is an artefact of our acquiescence.

Source: Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Brit ain

Michael Moore :

I say one evil empire down... one to go.

Source: The Big One

Anaiis nin :

.."and the time came when the risk it took to remain in a tightly closed bud became infinitely more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

George Orwell :

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act

Thomas Paine :

"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government."

The Belzer Rabbi

Let a good man do good deeds with the same zeal that the evil man does bad ones.

Oscar Romero

We who have a Voice must be a Voice for the Voiceless!

Svećenik u El Salvadoru, borio se za potlačene, ubijen tijekom američke intervencije

Arundhati Roy

It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers".

Bertrand Russell :

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

George Bernard Shaw :

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That is the essence of inhumanity

George Bernard Shaw :

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man

George Bernard Shaw

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not

Philip Slater

'Every apathetic individual is a brick in a tyrant's throne'

Henry David Th oreau :

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politcians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.

Source: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Pa ul Valery :

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Eli Weisel :

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." --Howard Zinn, "Failure to Quit", p. 45

Howard Zinn

Rebellion is only an occasional reaction to suffering in human history; we have infinitely more instances of submission to authority than we have examples of revolt. What we should be most concerned about is not some natural tendency toward violent uprising, but rather the inclination of people faced with an overwhelming environment of injustice to submit to it. Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.