Political Activists

"A man whose brain is pickled in whiskey is of little value to the ruling class, and he is of inestimable less value to the working class. Efficiency oils the wheels of revolution."

"we Socialists know that hookworms in the tummy and revolutionary thoughts in the brain cannot exist in the same man at the same time."

"The ruling class has always desired more efficient slaves. They bred them to be more efficient, and then found that efficiency in producing wealth also produced a desire on the part of the slave to enjoy more. In order to secure more, the slaves revolted."

"Sobriety means efficiency, and "efficiency" movements have in all ages been the incubators in which revolutions were hatched."

"When that efficient worker has built a world of beauty, comfort and luxury, he will not stop at the puny gates of private property with which the ruling class would shut him out of the Paradise he has created, but he will use the same efficiency with which he built the gates to hammer them down again."

"An efficient man is a rebellious man. And anything that raises the efficiency of the working class will speed the revolution."

"Get busy, you middle class foes of booze! We guarantee that if you can keep them sober, we will organize them for revolution."

"Prohibition has not reduced the sale of liquor, but if the ruling classes can succeed in cutting down drinking by liquor legislation, will it speed the coming revolution? Most assuredly!"

"Bolshevism is a new word, but the charges brought against it and its supporters have a strangely familiar sound-we seem to remember them of old. Privilege is so sterile of ideas; so barren of imagination, that it has not been able to think of one new lie; to concoct one fresh slander; to turn one new trick or say one new thing about Bolshevism that has not already been worn to tatters in the assaults upon abolition of slavery, trade unionism, woman's suffrage, Socialism, the Non-Partisan League and the I. W. W."

"Nepal's legendary activist, elected leader and philosophical and academic figure Rupchandra Bista is considered as the biggest advocate for information accessibility in Nepal... He emphasized people to adopt Thaha to excel their lives and livelihoods.... His campaign is said to be the first such campaigns to have reaches at the settlements of poor people. Despite his well-off familial background, Rudane worked for poor, disadvantaged and the marginalized section of society... During his 66-year-long life, Rudane spent half of his life campaigning for Thaha movement and its nobel causes to awaken people. His movement was widely appreciated. He was elected twice... to the Rastriya Panchayat or the parliament of the party-less Panchayat era... He was jailed for his campaign at times. He is still remembered for his firebrand campaigns and fiery public speeches. In terms of legislation of informational acessibility, Rudane and Thaha movement has been successful."

"Rup Chandra Bista, as we all know, is an extraordinary figure in Nepali politics. The way he lived his life, his ideology, and him pioneering the uniquely Nepali philosophy, known as Thaha Darshan, is essentially what inspired us to bring his life on screen. His life is as fascinating as it is inspiring... he said, ‘majority of us Nepalis are satisfied with one plate of rice and an embrace of a wife.’ That, for him, was not enough. He urged the people to live deliberately and consciously. So here’s this character who is largely forgotten in today’s Nepal. ...Rup Chandra Bista is someone who also spoke the truth and always did the right thing."

"I wonder if @ElonMusk's @Twitter has tortious interference claims against the Left activist groups which are causing damaging advertiser boycotts of the platform?"

"[Defending his purchase of a rare signed copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf] I'm a [video game] Call of Duty player right ... It's all about World War II and how you play and I'm a big fan of that. I've bought memorabilia from Churchill, from Stalin, from Hitler."

"Well let me make it absolutely clear, I'm not buying into the Nazi ideology. I'm totally against what the Nazis did."

"They're treating us like a Mafia, man! [...] It's unbelievable. It's only because they cannot extradite us to the US just for copyright violation. If they treat us as some sort of international criminal conspiracy, they can."

"Everyone tells me not to say the things I do. I'm very direct, very undiplomatic. Everyone tells me to stop talking about my hacker history, about my lifesytle, but I don't give a ****, I've just stayed the way I am. Over the past few years I realised that if I was to run a company or a fund, I needed to be the captain and not listen to anyone else. I needed to be the ruler of my world otherwise it was never going to work."

"I think in another 100 years that book will probably go up in value times 10."

"[On his early history as a hacker] Every hack was a trophy. I had a big feeling of power because I was running the most important worldwide mailbox exchanging hacking information and I knew what was really going on."

"What the US Govt is doing reminds me of what I learned in school about Nazi Germany. Ironic, Hollywood is run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs."

"[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload."

"I'm careful about what I write. I don't want to hurt or alienate anyone, but I feel there are some things that have to be said. When Gertrude Bonnin Simmons wrote about the young Indian men who went to college, returned and sold out their own people, cheated elderly people off the land, I'm sure she was unpopular for speaking it, but she told the truth."

"Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known by her Lakota name Zitkála-Šá, is one of the most widely written about women of SAI. Bonnin was a multitalented Native renaissance woman who wrote several books and was an accomplished musician (she wrote the first Native American opera, The Sundance Opera), teacher, editor, and political activist. Perhaps her greatest influence during the Progressive Era came through her leadership in the National Council of American Indians."

"During the Progressive era, Native Americans also began to serve as public advocates for their people. A generation educated in white institutions had gained familiarity with the dominant culture and acquired the political skills needed to speak for themselves. Their goal was to undo the economic and political dependency that had resulted from late nineteenth-century Indian policy. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin was the leading woman in this first generation of modern Indian activists. Known by her Yankton Sioux name Zitkala-Ša, she advocated both preserving Native culture from destruction and securing full rights of citizenship for Native peoples. She became the secretary of the first secular national pan-Indian reform organization established by Native peoples, the Society of American Indians."

"Dear Zitkala-Sa: I thank you for your book on Indian legends. I have read them with exquisite pleasure. Like all folk tales they mirror the child life of the world. There is in them a note of wild, strange music. You have translated them into our language in a way that will keep them alive in the hearts of men. They are so young, so fresh, so full of the odors of the virgin forest untrod by the foot of white man! The thoughts of your people seem dipped in the colors of the rainbow, palpitant with the play of winds, eerie with the thrill of a spirit-world unseen but felt and feared. Your tales of birds, beast, tree and spirit can not but hold captive the hearts of all children. They will kindle in their young minds that eternal wonder which creates poetry and keeps life fresh and eager."

"It would be false to say that Zitkala-Ša launched an American Indian literary tradition, but it is possible, in examining the cameo of her life and literature, to say that she struggled toward a vision of wholeness in which the conflicting parts of her existence could be reconciled. That she did not fully succeed is evident in her work, which is a model of ambivalences, of oscillations between two diametrically opposed worlds, but is also a model of retrieved possibilities, a creative, human endeavor that stands at the beginning of many such endeavors eventually to culminate in the finely crafted work of contemporary American Indian writers."

"Poets sing of a coming federation of the world, and we applaud. Idealists dream that in this commonwealth of all humanity the divine spark in man shall be the only test of citizenship, and we think of their dream and future history."

"Today the Indian is pressed almost to the farther sea. Does that sea symbolize his death?"

"Let it be remembered, before condemnation is passed upon the Red Man, that, while he burned and tortured frontiersmen, Puritan Boston burned witches and hanged Quakers, and the Southern aristocrat beat his slaves and set bloodhounds on the tracks of him who dared aspire to freedom. The barbarous Indian, ignorant alike of Roman justice, Saxon law, and the Gospel of Christian brotherhood, in the fury of revenge has brought no greater stain upon his name than these."

"Unfortunately civilization is not an unmixed blessing. Vices begin to creep into his life and deepen the Red Man's degradation. He learns to crave the European liquid fire. Broken treaties shake his faith in the newcomers. Continued aggressions goad him to desperation. The White Man's bullet decimates his tribes and drives him from his home."

"To take the life of a nation during the slow march of centuries seems not a lighter crime than to crush it instantly with one fatal blow."

"He loved the inheritance of his fathers, their traditions, their graves; he held them a priceless legacy to be sacredly kept. He loved his native land. Do you wonder still that in his breast he should brood revenge, when ruthlessly driven from the temples where he worshiped? Do you wonder still that he skulked in forest gloom to avenge the desolation of his home? Is patriotism a virtue only in Saxon hearts? Is there no charity to cover his crouching form as he stealthily opposed his relentless foe?"

"Let us develop our powers by thinking and acting for ourselves. That is the way we grow. We have been told organization is necessary to bring about results. We have been scattered to the four winds. Are we going to organize?"

"we must all work for this thing — that the American Indian must have a voice. He must say what is in him and by exchanging opinions, we are going to grow."

"We clasp the warm hand of friendship everywhere. From honest hearts and sincere lips we hear the hearty welcome and Godspeed."

"Quick to string his bow for vengeance; ready to bury the hatchet or smoke the pipe of peace; never was he first to break a treaty or known to betray a friend with whom he had eaten salt."

"The invasion of his broad dominions by a paler race brought no dismay to the hospitable Indian. Samoset voiced the feeling of his people as he stood among the winter-weary Pilgrims and cried "Welcome, Englishmen." Nor did the Indian cling selfishly to his lands; willingly he divides with Roger Williams and with Penn, who pay him for his own. History bears record to no finer examples of fidelity. To Jesuit, to Quaker, to all who kept their faith with him, his loyalty never failed."

"Use the words that come to you, that which is in the heart and mind."

"my mother said to me. “You must learn the white man’s language so when you grow up you will talk for us and for the Indian and the white man will have a better understanding.” I said, “I will.” It has not always been easy, but I said, “I am going to do the best I can and then I am going to let the Great Spirit do the rest.”"

"Now we are meeting a civilization from a race that came from Europe. We have to meet it each day — there is no dodging, and it is not easy. It is going to take courage; it is going to test your strength. It is going to test your faith in the Greatest of All. It is going to be hard, but let us stand the test, true to the Indian blood. Let us do that. Let us teach our children to be proud of their Indian blood and to stand the test bravely."

"The first time you stand up for right and it is refused you, shall you quit? Then you do not believe in it. We must continue speaking and claiming our human rights to live on this earth that God has made, so that we may think our thoughts and speak them — that we may have our part in the American life and be as any other human beings are."

"our little ones — they are our future hope. Our children!"

"The greatest gift in life is consciousness. Not positions, not the dollar, but that the Almighty Spirit gives us life and we have a rational mind with which to see all the wonders of the universe."

"My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand."

"With the strong, happy sense that both great and small are so surely enfolded in His magnitude that, without a miss, each has his allotted individual ground of opportunities, I am buoyant with good nature."

"Finally resuming the chair at my desk I feel in keen sympathy with my fellow-creatures, for I seem to see clearly again that all are akin. The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings. And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice. And those creatures who are for a time mere echoes of another's note are not unlike the fable of the thin sick man whose distorted shadow, dressed like a real creature, came to the old master to make him follow as a shadow. Thus with a compassion for all echoes in human guise, I greet the solemn-faced "native preacher" whom I find awaiting me. I listen with respect for God's creature, though he mouth most strangely the jangling phrases of a bigoted creed."

"At this stage of my own evolution, I was ready to curse men of small capacity for being the dwarfs their God had made them. In the process of my education I had lost all consciousness of the nature world about me. Thus, when a hidden rage took me to the small white-walled prison which I then called my room, I unknowingly turned away from my one salvation. Alone in my room, I sat like the petrified Indian woman of whom my mother used to tell me. I wished my heart's burdens would turn me to unfeeling stone. But alive, in my tomb, I was destitute! For the white man's papers I had given up my faith in the Great Spirit. For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks. On account of my mother's simple view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed. Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and God. I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversenstive nature was scraped off to the very quick."

"I would not forget that the pale-faced missionary and the hoodooed aborigine are both God's creatures, though small indeed their own conceptions of Infinite Love. A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. Here, in a fleeting quiet, I am awakened by the fluttering robe of the Great Spirit. To my innermost consciousness the phenomenal universe is a royal' mantle, vibrating with His divine breath. Caught in its flowing fringes are the spangles and oscillating brilliants of sun, moon, and stars."

"Shall we think or shall somebody think for us? We are on this earth to think and do the best we can according to our light."

"Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial. The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it. (V: IRON ROUTINE)"

"After my first three years of school, I roamed again in the Western country through four strange summers. During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid. My brother, being almost ten years my senior, did not quite understand my feelings. My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deporable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory "teenth" in a girl's years. (VI: FOUR STRANGE SUMMERS)"