As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be – it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.
Category Archive: 1909
For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
When smashing monuments, save the pedestals – they always come in handy.
It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you are not even a failure. You’re just not there.
History is a relay of revolutions.
People find life entirely too time-consuming.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.