David Harvey Quotes

The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.

It's the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there's still hope.

My take is that there's two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn't due to their infinite wisdom. It's because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it's like those people don't make history, it's us.

People may say 'What can I do? I'm only one person.' But we've proven that when we come together demonstrate, and speak our piece, there is no way the power structure can avoid being attentive.

We need to keep ringing the bell, wake people up to get our democracy together. Farm workers are like a symbol, and it is good that people are paying attention.

Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.

Being part of social movements like Black Lives Matter or organizations like NAACP, or any group representing a cause, gives you more resources, knowledge, and power. They can help you use your voice.

Our Revolution has been the keeper of the flame doing the vital work of building a grassroots movement that leverages the people's agenda.

In Chile, they had penas, where the community would come together to sing and plan how they were going to overthrow the government. There's a real hopefulness in that community style of organizing.

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.

"The life of the union depends upon more people getting to share the limelight, because with the limelight also comes responsibility and with the responsibility comes a little sharing of the load." "There isn't enough money to organize poor people. There never is enough money to organize anyone. If you put it on the basis of money, you're not going to succeed."

I think we're at a time where people just want to join together and cause change. People don't want to live like this any more.

A more just world is possible. In most of the global issues, and also in so many of the development issues I'm involved in in our region, the young people that I am working with are seizing the tools at their disposal and trying to use them well, for issues far larger than their immediate personal benefit and concerns. That's what gives me hope.

It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

AIM in essence is a movement rather than just an organization. It is a manifestation of the desperation of our people.

People power. It has no limits.

You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.

You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.

If we're going to be successful in taking on the billionaire class, we need a strong national grassroots movement.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

We want the government to be controlled by all the people, not by the richest 1%. That's always been the first demand. That's a simple enough message, and I think it's pretty clear now, even though much of the media has been disingenuous in its coverage. We don't want the heads of the biggest industries to make all the decisions, because they're not for the people. They're for the corporations. Power to the people!

Every great movement in the world starts with a tiny group of people who simply refuse to accept a situation.

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.