“The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.”
“I am becoming in coming undone. I unbind. I rise like the morning: revolution.”
“It seemed that there was no time to catch up with all the things that were happening. I would be at the construction workers demonstration one day and then marching with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with everything - the rent strikes, the sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give active support in some way. The more active i became, the more i liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole ... My energy just couldn t stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of the struggle and i wanted to dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me.”
“Ser joven y no ser revolucionario, es una contradicción hasta biológica”
“Language has everything to do with oppression and liberation. When the word victory means conquer vs. harmony and the word equality means homogenization vs. unity in/through diversity, then the liberation of a people from a minority class to communal stakeholders becomes much more difficult. Oppression has deep linguistic roots. We see it in conversations which interchange the idea of struggle with suffering in order to normalize abuse. We are the creators of our language, and our definitions shape the perceptions we have of the world. The first step to ending oppression is finding a better method of communication which is not solely dependent on a language rooted in the ideology of oppressive structures.”
“You ball up your fist each time you hear about an unfound injustice in the world. That makes me your brother.”
“Wir lieben den Geschmack von Blut, doch sein bloßer Anblick macht uns Angst.”
“But an action which wants to serve man ought to be careful not to forget him on the way, if it chooses to fulfill itself blindly, it will lose its meaning or will take on an unforeseen meaning; for the goal is not fixed once & for all; it is defined all along the road which leads up to it.”
“When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.”
“Most of us felt that taking control of our neighborhoods was the first step toward liberation...First, we would take control of the schools; then we would take control of the hospitals; then we would take control of the colleges, the housing, etc., etc. We would have community controlled employment, welfare centers, and city, state, and federal agencies. Hold on for a minute, somebody said. Where are y all gonna get the money to run all that stuff? We ll take community control of the banks, someone answered. You d better take community control of the army, too, because those banks aren t gonna just let you take their money lying down. We ll take control of the political institutions in our community. Then we ll take control of the congressional seats, the senate seats, the city council seats, the mayor s office, and every other office you can take control of. We ll take control of the political offices so we can allocate money to the people who need it. Y all just wishing and hoping, someone said. You can control the social institutions and the political institutions, but unless you control the economic and military institutions, you can only go so far.”
“When leaders betray their people and the people don t overthrow them, it s not just the leaders who should be blamed.”
“One did not love revolution. One embraced it with horror for the sake of the deliverance to follow.”
“Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische Struktur der Gesellschaft, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Überbau erhebt und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche Bewußtseinsformen entsprechen. Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozeß überhaupt. Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt. Auf einer gewissen Stufe ihrer Entwicklung geraten die materiellen Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft in Widerspruch mit den vorhandenen Produktionsverhältnissen oder, was nur ein juristischer Ausdruck dafür ist, mit den Eigentumsverhältnissen, innerhalb deren sie sich bisher bewegt hatten.”
“—Écoutez, Coban, c est terminé. —C est commencé...”
“Vigilance enables wisdom and is the key to freewill”
“WILLST DU SIE JETZT VERBRENNEN, DEINE ZORNIGE JUGEND?”
“They sit there shouting Don t do it. Someone told them revolution looked like the Cosby Show. A slight tug with a good lesson. Revolution is a tough struggle between what was and what needs to be.”