Ezra Furman Quotes

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

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.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

There's a battle outside raging It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls for the times they are a-changing.

If god is the root cause for our degradation destroy that god. If it is religion destroy it. If it is Manu Darma, Gita, or any other Mythology (Purana), burn them to ashes. If it is temple, tank, or festival, boycott them. Finally if it is our politics, come forward to declare it openly

Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.

We were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.

This is Not Another Revolution. This is a Civil Rights Movement

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

I'm part of an important movement that needs to happen.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to.

For me, 'revolution' simply means radical change.

The truth is that all civic and social change is friction. Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction, which is something that makes most people incredibly uncomfortable but which, for whatever reason, because of my upbringing or because of my genetics, is something that doesn't bug me.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land.

In any social revolution the one thing that keeps it alive is hope.

Tyranny may precipitate a revolutionary movement at any time.

We will take up the ball of the Revolution where our fathers stopped it and roll it to the final consummation of freedom and independence for the masses.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

Any initiative which patently served the interests of society was immediately viewed with suspicion and even with overt hostility. Why was our system so unresponsive to renewal and innovation?

… the most sacred right [revolution] to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. And then you win.