Socialism, Communism, Anarchism
“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.”
— Albert Einstein
“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.”
― Dom Helder Camara
“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”
— Edward Abbey
“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.”
— Helen Keller
Capitalism
“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
“You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
― Malcom X
Reform & Revolution
“If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution.”
— Emma Goldman
“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”
― Albert Einstein
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
War & Peace
“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”
― Noam Chomsky
“The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both.”
— Eugene V. Debs
“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
— Mother Jones
“Well, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?”
— Sinclair Lewis
Democracy
“Democracy is indispensable to the working class, because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task.”
— Rosa Luxemburg
“If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.”
— Eugene V. Debs
“In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practiced the ultimate democracy. You didn’t need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people.”
— Terry Pratchett
Race, Ethnicity & Culture
“Black people need some peace, white people need some peace, and we’re gonna have to fight, we’re gonna have to struggle, we’re gonna have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we’re asking for peace, they’re a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers and they don’t even understand what peace means.”
— Fred Hampton
“I suggest that Indigenous peoples’ individual and collective resentment-expressed as an angry and vigilant unwillingness to forgive-ought to be seen as an affective indication that we care deeply about ourselves, about our land and cultural communities, and about the rights and obligations we hold as First Peoples.”
— Glen Sean Coulthard
“Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door.
— Colson Whitehead
Gender & Sexuality
“Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom.”
— Rosa Luxemburg
“It occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality, because if I didn’t I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.”
— Bayard Rustin
“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
— Dorothy Parker