Quote

Revolutions are not push button affairs rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.

Michael Parenti

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Parenti
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
New York City
New York
Action
Evolve
Galvanized
Political
Push
Reservoir
Affair
Reservoirs
Popular
Grievance
Exists
Revolutions
Revolution
Button
Rather
Buttons
Hope
Affairs

More quotes by Michael Parenti

Image
[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy.
Michael Parenti
Image
A huge national security state has developed in the United States since World War II. Its function is to buttress anticommunist, procapitalist governments and undermine and destroy popular movements whenever possible.
Michael Parenti
Image
The US government is usually on the wrong side against the poor and downtrodden, because the wrong side is the right side, given the class interests upon which the [US] policy is fixed.
Michael Parenti
Image
The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
Michael Parenti
Image
You see there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime, and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of property.
Michael Parenti
Image
The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.
Michael Parenti
Image
It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
Michael Parenti
Image
The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
Michael Parenti
Image
Capital requires protection, as do the institutions through which it operates. As capital expands its operations, the state that is associated with its protection must develop its capacity for autocratic control. Thus, the Free World increasingly resembles a dreary string of heartless police states.
Michael Parenti
Image
One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.
Michael Parenti
Image
The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.
Michael Parenti
Image
Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot we can get more we want it all.
Michael Parenti
Image
One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.
Michael Parenti
Image
The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.
Michael Parenti
Image
The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.
Michael Parenti
Image
You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.
Michael Parenti
Image
Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.
Michael Parenti
Image
Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.
Michael Parenti
Image
There is a century-old saying, The dollar votes more times than the man.
Michael Parenti
Image
All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.
Michael Parenti