The only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.

If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

When I say history is a matter of life and death, I mean this: If you really don't know history, you are a victim of whatever the authorities tell you. You have no way of checking up on them. You have no way of deciding whether there is any truth in what they are saying.

We've never had our injustices rectified from the top, from the president or Congress, or the Supreme Court, no matter what we learned in junior high school about how we have three branches of government, and we have checks and balances, and what a lovely system. No. The changes, important changes that we've had in history, have not come from those three branches of government. They have reacted to social movements.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

Why do we have to be a military superpower? Why can't we be a humanitarian superpower?