Quote

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

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
Wells
Redefine
Well
Representative
Believe
Representatives
Things
Stuck
Would
Concepts
People
Progress
Democracy
Getting

More quotes by 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
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
Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.
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
I think it's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think that deep in our hearts we know that our comforts, our conveniences are at the expense of other people.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.
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 first understood the changes that were necessary in this world, because the waiters in the restaurant, when I cried, used to say, Leave her on the hillside to die. She's only a girl baby. I think they said it somewhat as a joke, maybe not, but it made me understand that being born female in this world was very different from being born male.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think we have to understand that 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
I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
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
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
Image
I think when every household in almost every neighborhood can produce what it needs without going through the market, we're going to undergo a huge change in the elevation of the community to the center of the city, and the elimination of the factory.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
New York has become almost a third-world country. When I was growing up it was mostly a Euro-American country. And it wasn't until LaGuardia was elected in 1933 that Italians were even considered Americans. 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
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
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