A Quote by Cornel West

I recall coming across a line by the late Charles Tilly when he said, "The conditions for the possibility of social movements have been called into question in the twenty-first century." And I said to myself, my god, a society in history without social movements, for me, is very difficult to live in.

Cornel West

Quote Topics

Across Been Century Charles Coming Conditions Difficult First God History Late Line Live Me Movements Myself Possibility Question Recall Said Social Social Movements Society Twenty Very Without

Quote Author

Cornel West
American - Educator
Born: June 2, 1953

You build movements and keep people in a struggle when it feels productive. Anti-capitalists have typically been the people in movements who have declared every gain to be a trick of the capitalist class to buy us off. That line isn't very inspiring, and it shows no sensitivity to how social movements actually succeed.

Cynthia Kauffman

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.

Alejandro Castro Espin

When Paul [Greengrass] was writing, he'd send me story ideas that he had. He was particularly interested in social movements and revolutions that had been happening all over the world, and how computers and the internet had helped those movements. He encouraged me to read a book about Anonymous, the hacker group called "white hat" hackers, meaning they're driven by ideology and social disruption as opposed to just greed.

Julia Stiles

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery.

Todd Gitlin

I think that a lot of social movements, political movements, powerful ones - certainly they form, collectively, an idea of the truth which becomes hard to question. It becomes a dogma, and from the inside it starts to look like common sense.

Julian Baggini

Historically the great movements for human liberation have always been movements to change institutions and not to preserve them intact. It follows from what has been said that there have been movements to bring about a changed distribution of power to do - and power to think and to express thought is a power to do- so that there would be a more balanced, a more equal, even, and equitable system of human liberties.

John Dewey

I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.

Eve Ensler

The 20th century is a period defined by cultural and artistic movements. However, the 21st century creative-scape that we occupy now doesn't really have movements in the same way. Instead it's made up of diverse individuals working across various platforms simultaneously; art, architecture, film, music and literature.

Doug Aitken

What's more important is that we talk about movements; change happens through movements. The movement to end slavery, the movement to bring justice for those who have been left out of the system, movements to include women, movements around sexual preference - all these movements brought about change.

Danny Glover

There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.

Maajid Nawaz

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

Ellen Willis

Political and social history are in my view two aspects of the same process. Social life loses half its interest and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately.

F. M. Powicke

Social media can be very effective in creating movements. In the beginning, that is how I first got attention.

Greta Thunburg

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have made a tremendous leap just by rejecting the neoliberal adjustment policies, they are making a statement from the social perspective. Capital in these cases has not been protected in any way which along with non - interference of the state is what neo liberalism stands for. It has gone the other way around; they have looked for social policies from the political movements and then when they have acquired the power of those political movements they have become in charge of the State.

Alejandro Castro Espin

History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements.