John Berger Quotes

I believe boycotts are wrong.

Here is what is needed for Occupy Wall Street to become a force for change: a clear, and clearly expressed, objective. Or two.

Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.

Usually, boycotts sometimes don't really accomplish anything besides the fact that you show you that don't agree with what's going on.

You have to be careful how you're using the word boycott.

My first civil disobedience arrest for social justice was in 1986 for protesting the SDI.

Ours is a country where anything can be accomplished if enough people get angry... because, in America, we act on our collective anger.

Rebellion is obsolete - change things from the inside working out.

The main problem is that for a boycott to be effective, you must first persuade thousands - maybe even millions of others - to go along, which is a lot of work and usually not successful.

I do not believe you have to be an elected official to help 'change the world.' In fact, maybe it is easier from the outside.

I think that rather than saying that Occupy Wall Street has died, we can say that they're in the process of understanding what the long march through alternative institutions might mean.

As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.

To change criminal justice policy in any meaningful way means to propose changing a very longstanding system. It's not realistic to think you can do it overnight.

In 2012, I see the potential for people to come together, huge moments of political and social engagement where elections are part of the strategy for change, but not the end goal and not the only thing that matters.

Changing social policy is just dogged hard work.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

Protest is, at its core, designed to move policy.

Especially in the sphere of social activism, I think we tend to unwittingly conceptualize progress or revolution as black and white and having a clear beginning and end.

If civil disobedience is the way to go about change, than I think a lot of people will be going to San Francisco

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

It's not enough to say we need to love each other, you have to go behind that and say we need to change these policies, we need to fight, we need to protest, we need to agitate for change.

Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.

The goal is to talk about the issues that are happening in the USA with the ultimate goal of making change. Not just some rebellious act that we're trying to have against our country.