Grace Lee Boggs Quotes

Quotes about:

• We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass.' It's always about critical connections.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Connections, Fabric, World

  James Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs (1974). “Revolution and Evolution”, p.44, NYU Press

  304 Copy quote

• You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Responsibility, Taking Responsibility, Responsible

  "Revolution as a New Beginning: an Interview with Grace Lee Boggs". Interview with Adrian Harewood and Tom Keefer, uppingtheanti.org. July 22, 2003.

  331 Copy quote

• To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Spiritual, Struggle, Philosophical

  315 Copy quote

• You don't choose the times you live in, but you do choose who you want to be.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Want

  "Film Review: ‘American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs’" by Justin Chang, variety.com. June 24, 2013.

  299 Copy quote

• A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Creativity, Exercise, People

  274 Copy quote

• People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Spiritual, Sea, People

  263 Copy quote

• The only way to survive is by taking care of one another.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Care, Way

  82 Copy quote

• Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Spiritual, Practice, Community

  221 Copy quote

• We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Garden, Community, Levels

  229 Copy quote

• Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Love Is, Yesterday, Today

  Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige, Danny Glover (2012). “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century”, p.97, Univ of California Press

  249 Copy quote

• Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Reality, Ideas, Stuck

  "Remembering Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015): 'We Have to Change Ourselves in Order to Change the World'". www.democracynow.org. October 06, 2015.

  228 Copy quote

• Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Mother, Hate, Long

  254 Copy quote

• We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Creativity, Practice, Cities

  242 Copy quote

• Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Creativity, Responsibility, Past

  "Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century". Book by Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs, billmoyers.com. 1974.

  228 Copy quote

• I think we have to rethink the concept of “leader.” 'Cause “leader” implies “follower.” And, so many- not so many, but I think we need to appropriate, embrace the idea that we are the leaders we've been looking for.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Ideas, Leader

  Interview with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. June 15, 2007.

  127 Copy quote

• Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Inspirational, Writing, Ideas

  138 Copy quote

• I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy. I think that at some level, people recognize that growing our economy is destroying us. It's destroying us as human beings, it's destroying our planet. I think there's a great human desire for solutions, for profound solutions - and that nothing simple will do it. It really requires some very great searching of our souls.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Simple, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  141 Copy quote

• The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Radical

  112 Copy quote

• History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Cutting, Past, Self

  Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige, Danny Glover (2012). “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century”, p.79, Univ of California Press

  74 Copy quote

• We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Wall, Capacity To Love, Cities

  Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige, Danny Glover (2012). “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century”, p.47, Univ of California Press

  128 Copy quote

• When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Jesus, Real, Needs

  Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige (2011). “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century”, p.60, Univ of California Press

  130 Copy quote

• I think that deep in our hearts we know that our comforts, our conveniences are at the expense of other people.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Heart, Thinking, People

  "VIDEO: Legendary Detroit Activist Grace Lee Boggs Turns 100; Watch Never-Before-Aired Interview". Interview with Amy Goodman, www.nationofchange.org. July 1, 2015.

  36 Copy quote

• I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, People, Soul

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  11 Copy quote

• The natural tendency of children is to solve problems, but we try to indoctrinate them with facts, which they are supposed to feed back, and then we fail them. And that's child abuse. And you should never raise children that way. You should cultivate and encourage their natural tendencies to create solutions to the problems around them.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Children, Abuse, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  97 Copy quote

• I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, People, Transition

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  11 Copy quote

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