Socialists From The United States

"I believe more in the goodness of bad people than i do in the badness of good people."

"A Miracle: An event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it."

"Life is a compromise between fate and free will."

"It is the weak man who urges compromise—never the strong man."

"Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive."

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

"There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere. This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must be done to make it stand quiet. So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches, sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah ourselves hoarse. Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes — to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn't matter much; and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin. A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a variation of Plan Number Two — the end being gained by hypnotic effects in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the fire-box to increase the draft. ..."

"Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes."

"Wealth: A cunning device of Fate whereby men are made captive, and burdened with responsibilites from which only Death can file their fetters."

"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience."

"An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all."

"If your religion does not change you, then you had better change your religion."

"Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes a day. Wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit."

"If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them."

"Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it — so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."

"Most Authors cringe and flatter and Fish for compliments. If they fail to get Applause, they say the World is a Scurvy Place and those who dwell therein a Dirty Lot: if they succeed, they give thanks to Nobody, saying they got only what their Meritt entitles them to. But I rather like the World. The Flesh is pleasing and the Devil does not trouble me."

"Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. The intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred."

"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lies only a few miles from us tonight. Tonight he must feel good as he looks down upon us. We sit here together, a rainbow, a coalition — the sons and daughters of slavemasters and the sons and daughters of slaves, sitting together around a common table, to decide the direction of our party and our country. His heart would be full tonight."

"Our time has come. Our time has come. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint. Our time has come. Our faith, hope, and dreams will prevail. Our time has come. Weeping has endured for nights, but now joy cometh in the morning. Our time has come. No grave can hold our body down. Our time has come. No lie can live forever. Our time has come. We must leave racial battle ground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground. America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace. Our time has come. Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change because our time has come."

"Young America, dream. Choose the human race over the nuclear race. Bury the weapons and don't burn the people. Dream -- dream of a new value system. Teachers who teach for life and not just for a living; teach because they can't help it. Dream of lawyers more concerned about justice than a judgeship. Dream of doctors more concerned about public health than personal wealth. Dream of preachers and priests who will prophesy and not just profiteer. Preach and dream!"

"I am somebody. I am a somebody. I am a child of God. I may not be educated but I am somebody. I may not have any money but I am somebody. I may not eat steak every day but I am somebody. I may not look the way you look but I am somebody."

"Rising tides don't lift all boats, particularly those stuck at the bottom. For the boats stuck at the bottom there's a misery index. This Administration has made life more miserable for the poor. Its attitude has been contemptuous. Its policies and programs have been cruel and unfair to working people. They must be held accountable in November for increasing infant mortality among the poor. In Detroit one of the great cities of the western world, babies are dying at the same rate as Honduras, the most underdeveloped nation in our hemisphere. This Administration must be held accountable for policies that have contributed to the growing poverty in America. There are now 34 million people in poverty, 15 percent of our nation. 23 million are White; 11 million Black, Hispanic, Asian, and others -- mostly women and children. By the end of this year, there will be 41 million people in poverty. We cannot stand idly by. We must fight for a change now."

"The Rainbow is making room for small farmers. They have suffered tremendously under the Reagan regime. They will either receive 90 percent parity or 100 percent charity. We must address their concerns and make room for them. The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays. No American citizen ought be denied equal protection from the law."

"The Rainbow is making room for the young Americans. Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote. Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers. Young America must be politically active in 1984. The choice is war or peace. We must make room for young America."

"The Rainbow is making room for the Native American, the most exploited people of all, a people with the greatest moral claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of their ancient land and claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of land and water rights, as they seek to preserve their ancestral homeland and the beauty of a land that was once all theirs. They can never receive a fair share for all they have given us. They must finally have a fair chance to develop their great resources and to preserve their people and their culture."

"We are co-partners in a long and rich religious history -- the Judeo-Christian traditions. Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad. We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities. We must return to higher ground. We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed. These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem."

"America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt."

"No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice. Only leadership -- that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration -- can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation. Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land. Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom."

"This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission: to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race."

"Schools across the country celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day today... Many schools show his historic “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, a speech given before hundreds of thousands... Dr. King's commitment provides a wonderful example for all of us, but particularly for the young. By the wisdom of his teaching, the justice of his cause, the intensity of his commitment, he helped transform America. Today, Dr. King's example is more important than ever. Inequality has reached new extremes. We have a president that purposefully rouses racial and ethnic fears and divisions. Politics has become bitter, partisan, and increasingly marked by extreme and often hateful rhetoric. We are spending more and more on the Pentagon—already the largest military budget by far in the world—and cutting back on programs for the vulnerable, everything from food stamps, to Medicaid, to public housing and aid for poor schools and students. We end up with guided missiles and misguided young people—a tragic waste. Today, a new Poor People’s Campaign is building, organizing lines of race, region, and religion. It has been marching on state legislatures and now is increasing pressure on Washington. It is not about right or left, but about right and wrong. Dr. King called on us to express the better angels of our souls. Now, as we celebrate his life, we would do well to put his lessons into practice."

"Well, on the one hand, I saw President Barack Obama standing there looking so majestic, and I knew the people in the villages of Kenya and Haiti and mansions and palaces in Europe and China were all watching this young African-American male assume the leadership to take our nation out of a pit to a higher place. And then, I thought about who was not there. As I mentioned, Medgar Evers, the late husband of sister Myrlie. There's Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, two Jews and a black killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And Jimmie Lee Jackson. So the martyrs and the murdered whose blood made last night possible. I could not help but think this was their night. And if I had one wish, if Medgar or if Dr. King could have just been there for a second in time, it would have made my heart rejoice. And so, it was kind of the dual thought of his ascendance in leadership and the price that was paid to get him there."

"Given the unexpected, hard-won success of Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, the Third American Revolution may well be on its way. Certainly, the phenomenon of a Black man bidding for the most powerful office in the world has raised, irreversibly, the expectations of Americans who, prior to Jackson's candidacy, never even dreamed about accurate, or responsive, political representation. The compelling personal history of Jesse Jackson must inspire the least powerful and the most despised segments of our body politic."

"See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith-based... I want to cut his nuts off. Barack, he's talking down to black people."

"We need a regime change in this country.... If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq we lose all moral authority."

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating."

"We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams."

"That's all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel. Every time you go to Hymietown that's all they want to talk about."

"If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it because I am somebody! Respect me! Protect me! Never neglect me! I am somebody! My mind is a pearl! I can learn anything in the world! Nobody can save us, from us, for us, but us! I can learn. It is possible. I ought to learn. It is moral. I must learn. It is imperative."

"Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people... There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned."

"Shaping a platform for a political party when you didn't win the nomination is not an easy task. The last runner-up in the Democratic primaries to contest the writing of the Democratic platform was Jesse Jackson, in 1988. Reverend Jackson ran an extraordinary and historic campaign that year, one that not only changed the nature of politics in America but helped create a new multiracial progressive movement. During his campaign, Jackson won nearly 7 million votes. I was proud to endorse his campaign and happy that he won the Vermont primary that year. Unfortunately, however, very few of his progressive positions were incorporated into the Democratic Party platform of 1988."

"Do you know what the words "African American" really imply? That the person doesn't have the natural right to be there, so that whatever right they have has to be given to them. John Kennedy's daddy spent his whole life and a whole lot of money trying to keep from becoming (called) half Native American. For blacks to get control of the set-asides, the black elite deliberately set up this African American thing. Jesse Jackson called a meeting a long time ago of elite blacks, determined to use this term. The majority of blacks hated this term with a passion, but the media is pushing it down their throats."

"I think that Jesse Jackson's run for the Presidency is something crucial and very, very important. I totally disagree with those people who say that he's fracturing the black vote. I think that the objections to him have not held water. At this point all of us have to support anything that would galvanize the black community and recognize how disenfranchised they are, to begin to take part in the voting process. Understand the importance of it. On the other hand, to make a man "the leader" creates a real problem: utter dependence on "the leadership." There will come a leader who will lead us out of Babylon. That's very dangerous. I see that political liberation is not possible until each one of us begins to think of ourselves as power principles, as a nest of power relative to other people's power, of course. Until we become self activated, we're never really going to change things. We have to stop waiting for someone, a leader, to come up and tell us what to do. That leader is also at our mercy. What happens when that leader is shot down? What happens when that leader is called an embezzler, a prostitute or a lesbian or gay? It's dangerous."

"People must have a channel through which they can express themselves if there is to be any hope that they will transcend the sense of powerlessness and apathy encouraged by our dominant ideological myths. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition has come closest in recent times to serving as this kind of channel. One could see a glimmer of the possibilities for the future, watching the young people who were Jesse Jackson delegates at the Democratic conventions in 1984 and 1988. Many had never participated in any political movement before, and you could see how the Jackson campaign had opened things up for them and gave a whole new dimension to their lives. The Rainbow Coalition has had its share of internal problems, but it has been far more successful than any of the more explicitly ideological groups on the Left in teaching people to give an affirmative answer to the old Biblical question, "Am I my brothers [and sisters] keeper?""

"But if you harm this brother, I warn you in the name of Allah, this will be the last one you harm. We are not making any idle threats. We have no weapons. We carry not so much as a penknife. But I do tell the world that Almighty God Allah is backing us up in what we say and what we do, and we warn you in His name, leave this servant of Almighty God alone."

"Sit down and talk to Rev. Jackson. Sit down, Jewish leaders, and talk with us. We are ready to talk with you. Sit down and talk like intelligent people who have a future at stake."

"As Jesse Jackson told me as he marched with students and their unionized teachers in Madison during the Wisconsin uprising of 2011: "Dr. King's last act on Earth, marching in Memphis, Tennessee, was about workers' rights to collective bargaining... You cannot remove the roof for the wealthy and remove the floor for the poor.""

"I think he has indeed learned that he must take his leadership from grass-roots movements, and that, in my mind is what is most impressive about Jesse Jackson. In 1984 at the very beginning of the campaign, if he had talked about gays and lesbians, he probably would have had little to say, but as a result of that interaction that has occurred over the last period, he felt comfortable enough to raise that issue at the Democratic Convention in front of millions and millions of people."

"Most Americans realize that the black civil rights revolution of the late Fifties and early Sixties effectively began with Dr. Martin Luther King's successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. This tool is being perfected, for blacks, by the Reverend Jesse Jackson in Chicago. Our own nationwide grape boycott is hurting corporate agriculture so much that the growers are eventually going to have to deal with us, no matter how hard the power class tries to weaken the boycott's effectiveness."

"Jesse Jackson came by and said he wants to endorse me. I look on this with some doubt, because he generally makes his living criticizing people, not supporting them."

"A portrait of Jesse Jackson hung in our hallway."