Grace Lee Boggs Quotes About Revolution

Quotes about: Revolution

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• I think we’re not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Country, Thinking, Government

  "Social Activist Grace Lee Boggs on Shaking Up the Status Quo in America". "The Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. June 15, 2007.

• We need to undergo a very radical revolution in values. And we need to think about what it's like to have become so materialistic that we think having a good job, and consuming like crazy to compensate for the dehumanization of the job, is living like a human being.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Jobs, Crazy, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Powerful, Light, Revolution

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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

• I think we have to understand that the nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Powerful, Thinking, Light

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Actually, if you go back to what Marx said in The Communist Manifesto over a hundred years ago, when in talking about the constant revolutions in technology, he ended that paragraph by saying, "All that is sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air, and men and women are forced to face with sober senses our conditions of life and our relations with our kind." We're at that sort of turning point in human history.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Technology, Men, Talking

• I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived. And a revolution has some sense of a long time frame, millions of years that we've been evolving on this planet.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Years, Long

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think our concept of revolution, in terms of getting the power to do things, is too focused on the state. We have a scenario of revolution that first, you know, comes from 1917, that first you take the state power, and then you change things. And we don't realize it's collapsed.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Firsts, Revolution

• When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Revolution, Victim

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The image of blacks usually is one of people who are suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty. The idea of them as agents and activists - as starting revolutions - does not exist in most people's minds. And I think it's very, very important that folks understand how much this country was founded on the enslavement of blacks, and how the resistance of blacks to that enslavement has been the spark plug for so many important developments.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Country, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  War, Home, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• People in Detroit aren't just urban gardening. They're starting a new mode of education. They're trying to give children the education to be "solutionaries" rather than people who are going to get jobs in the system. And that is a huge change, a cultural revolution.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Jobs, Children, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The image of blacks usually is one of people who are suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty. The idea of them as agents and activists - as starting revolutions - does not exist in most people's minds. And I think it's very, very important that folks understand how much America was founded on the enslavement of blacks, and how the resistance of blacks to that enslavement has been the spark plug for so many important developments.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Ideas, America

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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. We have to see today in light of the transition, say, from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from agriculture to industry, and from industry to post-industry. We're in an epoch transition.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Hunting, Light

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The Vietnam War was taking place, which was raising all sorts of questions in the United States, and it was forcing Asian-Americans to stop thinking of themselves as model minorities and to identify themselves more with world revolution, which was very important in my development.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  War, Thinking, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another. Talk about Paleolithic and Neolithic.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Russia, Transition

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• People in Detroit aren't just urban gardening. They're starting a new mode of education. They're trying to give children the education to be "solutionaries" rather than people who are going to get jobs in the system. And that is a huge change, a cultural revolution. The things that are happening in Detroit would amaze you if you're used to only looking at statistics, and only thinking of blacks as sufferers and not as activists.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Jobs, Children, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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