Pankaj Mishra Quotes

The so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America.

All across the Middle East in the streets, people are demanding democracy. It's amazing. The only way in America you get people to get worked up like that is to threaten to give them health care.

At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.

When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

The '60s was the end of the America that the rest of the world liked.

There's a difference between an outburst of spontaneous anger, which doesn't have a political objective, and a more measured response that we saw in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I mean it's easier to be in a demonstration if it's a trip that's one of the reasons why the whole thing fell apart in 1971, because it wasn't a trip any longer.

Globally the Greens have arisen like a spontaneous combustion, a reaction to the narrow-minded state-backed exploitation of resources and wealth for a few at the expense of the many.

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.

With these raids the backbone of the radical movement in America is broken.

A national campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism [the convention] and a couple of hangings thrown in. It is better, even, than war.

Mr. President, If you don’t do something and do it right away, I don’t know what is going to happen to this country.

In the '60s and '70s, a protest song was a genre in music.

I think that if the political and social movement groups and organizations that operate in this country today had the same kind of energetic commitment that the medical marijuana people have, many things could change in this country.

We've always believed that popular culture and populist politics go hand in hand. It's an honor to be working with so many respected and influential artists, and we're indebted to them for having the courage to speak out at a time when our country so desperately needs change. For our 2.5 million members and far beyond, the Vote for Change tour will have a seismic cultural impact.

I don't think things are getting more insane. I do know that the country is more divided than it's ever been. Tensions in America are at their peak.

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.

America is a mess. We don't even know what to look for anymore, folks. Our country has to straighten out. And we have to straighten out fast.

Until the chance for political participation is there, we who are poor will continue to attack the soft part of the American system - its economic structure. We will build power through boycotts, strikes, new union - whatever techniques we can develop. These attacks on the status quo will come, not because we hate, but because we know America can construct a humane society for all its citizens - and that if it does not, there will chaos.

Wherever I found resistance to oppression, whether in Africa, in Latin America, certainly here in America in the South, I joined that resistance. I took part in the labor movement, in social movements, in the church community. I felt that it was the honorable thing to do and still do.

America is a mess. And that's why when Hillary Clinton makes the speech, she doesn't talk about radical Islam. She doesn't talk about the problems that we have in this country and throughout the world.

If there is trouble in the country, neither I nor my people made it, and all that we have ever done, after much endurance on our part, is to maintain and uphold the constitution and institutions of our country, and to protect an injured, innocent, and persecuted people against misrule and mob violence.

Most of the population in America is disenfranchised. It doesn't matter what they think. Just look at the passionate rhetoric about how we can't stand by when a country uses weapons to kill innocent civilians.