Eugene V. Debs Quotes

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.

Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation - the one is life, the other death.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

…if civilization is to advance at all in the future, it must be through the help of women, women freed of their political shackles, women with full power to work their will in society.

Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws.

Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.

Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.

The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

The progress made in refinement of manners and morals seems to have gone on simultaneously with the improvement in arts, manufactures and commerce. It moved slowly at first, but has been constantly increasing in velocity…. we are a much better people than we were then, better instructed, more sincere and kind-hearted, less gross and brutal, and have fewer of the concomitant vices of a less civilized state.

The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

The world we want to transform has already been worked on by history and is largely hollow. We must nevertheless be inventive enough to change it and build a new world.

… economic systems ... have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions.

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

If we're still talking about the same thing 40 or 50 years later, then that means we're not doing anything about it.

Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement.

I always had a desire to see change and be part of it.

I have truly been inspired by the struggle and triumphs of so many women that dare to break new ground in all aspects of society, and those who have pushed the boundaries of human imagination.

If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.

The people who resist change will be confronted by the growing number of people who see that better ways are available; thanks to technology.

Virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

The function of the rebel is to shake the fixated mores of the rigid order of civilization; and this shaking, though painful, is necessary if the society is to be saved from boredom and apathy. Obviously I do not refer to everyone who calls himself a rebel, but only to the authentic rebel. Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time, or we shall stick in the mud. Yet neither must we undertake a new world as catastrophic Utopians, and wreck our civilization in our hurry to mend it.