Politics & Power

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“Burning books was an incomprehensible act, and most people who didn’t even read would fight for the right to open any book they chose. Those in power fear free minds, and nothing unlocked thinking like literature.”

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

“Man’s capacity to rise above his social and historical situation seems to be conditioned by the sensitivity with which he recognizes the extent of his involvement in it.”

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

“Everyone is familiar with the slogan ‘The personal is political’ — not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives.”

“The job of the newspaper is to afflict the comforted and comfort the afflicted.”

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

“You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Withdrawing from it does not make it go away.”