Quote

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Grace Lee Boggs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Grace Lee Boggs
Age: 100 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 27
Died: 2015
Died: October 5
Activist
Author
Civil Rights Advocate
Non-Fiction Writer
Politician
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Ria Stone
Humans
Short
Self
Cutting
Whether
Metaphysically
History
Triumphantly
Tell
Critically
Stories
Advance
Past
Evolution
Human
Beings

More quotes by Grace Lee Boggs

Image
You don't choose the times you live in, but you do choose who you want to be.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
It's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
In every crisis, people do not respond like a school of fish. Some people become immobilized. Some people become very angry, some commit suicide, and other people begin to find solutions. And visionary organizers look at those people, recognize them and encourage them, and they become leaders of the future.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think it's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
People in Detroit aren't just urban gardening. They're starting a new mode of education. They're trying to give children the education to be solutionaries rather than people who are going to get jobs in the system. And that is a huge change, a cultural revolution.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We have to think in a very different sense than the way we think now. We think in terms of quick fixes, that solutions will come out of a few protest demonstrations, and calling upon the government to do something. And we can keep trying to do that, and it won't work.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We need to undergo a very radical revolution in values. And we need to think about what it's like to have become so materialistic that we think having a good job, and consuming like crazy to compensate for the dehumanization of the job, is living like a human being.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think we’re not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
A rebellion is something that is developing as an explosion coming out of the righteous grievances of a community of people.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Really, people are not a school of fish. Finding the leaders of the future is a question of recognizing those people who give leadership in a crisis.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We're at a great transition point in terms of population, demographics, and what it means to be a human being.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The Vietnam War was taking place, which was raising all sorts of questions in the United States, and it was forcing Asian-Americans to stop thinking of themselves as model minorities and to identify themselves more with world revolution, which was very important in my development.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We have this exploding prison population. We have the equivalent of martial law on a day-to-day, 24/7-hour basis in our cities, because we have not heard the cry for help by young people in 1967.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.
Grace Lee Boggs