Clay Shirky Quotes

Whether you have a hundred friends on Facebook or whether you're on TV or whatever, at every level, everybody has a platform. We all have a responsibility, given what's going on, to speak using that platform as much as we can, and to engage. Whether that's calling members of Congress, marching, getting involved locally, getting involved with Let America Vote, or if all you can get done during the day is you see the news and you want to make sure your hundred friends on Facebook know what you think about it, that is a really important part of this.

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable.

...the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor

Those Ron Paul supporters … will Tweet the heck out of something if they are not happy.

Surely one can be a dissident without intending to run for a higher public office.

Politically, we have seen the impact of social media organizing people through the Arab Spring.

A lot of people will say to me, they'll say, "When is Trump going to be gone?" People who are thinking that way and are waiting, for those folks I worry that every day when they wake up and Trump is still president, every day is November 9. That's not a good headspace to be in. It just happens to be the case that the best thing you can do to feel better is to be actively engaged in pushing back, and that also happens to be the best thing that you can do for the country right now.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

We need to also act out, and anything that [Donald] Trump does, anything he's trying to do that we don't agree with or anything this country is doing in general that we don't agree with, we need to protest, we need to make our voices heard. And that has to go beyond Twitter - for me as well.

One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement.

I think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think.

What I've started to realize is that social media is not just technology - it's become its own entity, full of energy waves. These energy waves could be a Tweet about something you are furious about, like the Keystone Pipeline, or a piece of legislation. Instantly, energy surrounds and adds traction, influence, making it come alive

I believe in civil disobedience among other forms of resistance in times when it's called for.

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

I am emboldened, not cowed, by the words and actions of Trump and his circle. I believe many others are as well. Together we will stand in opposition. I'm not going anywhere, and I won't be silenced.

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

We're here to let the Democrats know that the grass roots and the anti-war movement elected them to create change.

I witnessed a lot of violence, and I found myself asking the question: Do you ever use violence to try to bring about political change?

I've got a fierce passion for politics but I can't stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I'm up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.

A hashtag is not helping... A hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It's a hashtag.

The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. I think that's a powerful message in this time of political strife.

It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot