Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
—Groucho Marx
You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
—Vaclav Havel
I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.
—Abbie Hoffman
I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.
—Abbie Hoffman
I am, and always have been, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and weaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.
—George Bernard Shaw
We are impressed with nature's power, but by projecting upon this power an image of the feminine, the mother, we reassure ourselves — for surely a mother will always be loving toward us, continue to feed us, clothe us, and carry away our wastes, and never kill us, no matter how much toxic waste we put in the soil or how many CFCs in the ozone. The sense of nature as inexhaustible mother encourages us to feel there are no limits to a finite planet, while the sense of nature as benign and ever-loving mother permits us to continue disregarding a crescendo of warnings.
—Elizabeth Dodson Gray
We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.
—Stewart I. Udall
A civilization which tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to make of others mere human machines, must inevitably evolve anarchy and bring destruction.
—Henry George
It is supposed to be part of the American tradition that if we want to step out of line, we step out of line. Democracy isn't falling in line behind the president. Democracy is for people to think independently, be skeptical of government, look around and try to find out what's going on. And if they find out that government is deceiving them, to speak out as loudly as they can.
—Howard Zinn
I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.
—Abbie Hoffman
It is the people who have no say in making wars who suffer most from the consequences of them.
—Philippa Carr
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.
—Frank Zappa
The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire.
—Émile de Girardin
If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
—Greg McKeown
How many people here have telekenetic powers? Raise my hand.
—Emo Philips