.

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‘Boom, Bust, Quit’ is what capitalism does. The ecological crises it causes, the social crises it causes, the productivity crises it causes are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system. P.

​

Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. P.

​

Our predicament, the greatest humanity has ever faced, is often characterised as a climate crisis. But it would be more accurate to call it an Earth systems crisis. P.

​

What we are witnessing is the breakdown, at astonishing speed, of our life support systems- driven by capitalism, accelerated by neoliberalism. P.

​​

What is neoliberalism? It’s an ideology whose central belief is that competition is the defining feature of humankind. It tells us that we are greedy and selfish, but that greed and selfishness light the path to social improvement, generating the wealth that will enrich us all. It casts us as consumers rather than citizens. P.

​

Neoliberalism has often been imposed on people during great crises: at moments when they were too distracted to resist- or even notice- the new policies that governments were slipping under their doors. P.

​​

...there is no natural law that dictates the rich should run the world. Their dominance is sustained only by our collective fear and our failure of political imagination. P.

​

Just as there is a poverty line below which no one should fall, she argues that there is a wealth line above which no one should rise. P.

​

By failing to match their solutions to the scale of the problems, they treat us like idiots — and we know it. P.

​

Across most of the progressive spectrum, a timid reluctance to articulate what we really want, and the mistaken belief that people aren't ready to hear anything more challenging, condemns us to failure. P.

​

Only a demand for system change, directly confronting the powers driving us to societal despair and planetary destruction, has the potential to address the scale of our problems. Only a big ask — a very big one — will inspire and mobilise the millions of people required to transform our political and economic system. P.

​

There was never time for incrementalism. Far from being a shortcut to the change we want to see, it's the morass into which ambition sinks. System change, as the neoliberals and new demagogues have proven, is and has always been the only fast and effective means of transformation. P.

​

But we need to act where and how we can, to create, wherever possible, pools of resistance and examples of change that can inspire and mobilise our better values: altruism, empathy, community, family, and the pursuit of a more just and equitable world. Values to which most people subscribe, regardless of political or religious affiliation. P.

​

The most important question that humanity has ever faced is whether we can reach the social tipping points before we reach the environmental tipping points. P.

​

If we are to reach these social tipping points, our first task is to tear down the cloak of invisibility that shields both neoliberalism and the true nature of capitalism from public view. It is to expose their breaches, their obscurities, and their deceptions. It is to reveal what has been hidden. It is to speak their names. P.

.

The phrase ‘It’s not true that’ carries less weight than the familiar narrative to which it is attached. A string of facts, however well attested, has no power to correct or dislodge a powerful story... The only thing that can displace a story is a story. P.8

​

Competition and individualism are the values at the heart of the twenty-first
century’s secular religion. Everywhere we are encouraged to fight for wealth and social position like stray dogs over a dustbin. P.21

​

Without a new, guiding story of their own, allowing them to look towards a better future rather than a better past, it was inevitable that political parties which once sought to resist the power of corporations and the very rich would lose their sense of direction. P.41

​

The streets were once our commons, where children played and adults talked. But cars have occupied the space that people used for other purposes, drowned out conversation and – through noise, pollution and stress – driven us indoors. P.52

​

We spend hours every day watching other people doing what we might otherwise be doing: dancing, singing, playing sport, even cooking. What television tells us is that life is somewhere other than where we are. It encourages us to connect not with those around us, but with celebrities whom we will never meet, whose lives we are induced to believe we share. P.53

​

All these trends reinforce the dominant story of our times: that we are governed by self-interest and driven by the desire to outcompete those around us... we have arranged society in such a way that they come to the fore. P.55

​

If ecosystems or political systems deteriorate, younger people, who know nothing else, regard that degraded state as normal and unexceptional – and so it continues. P.58

​

Holiday and airline companies have worked hard to persuade us that living the dream means travelling the world, seeking novel experiences. But I suspect that what many people want above all else is a strong sense of home: to be embedded in a thriving and caring community. P.64

​

While people might take pride in a job that attracts high social status but causes tremendous harm to others, in this case, you can attach your pride and sense of purpose to something indisputably beneficial. Building community is a noble calling. P.74

​

Unless we are also engaged nationally and globally, our communities are at constant risk of destruction and dispersal. P.75

​

...the revived community can become a source of strength on which we can build our wider movements. It is a lived example of the world we want to create. P.75

​

To most people, who are not economists or politicians or journalists, the state of the living planet features as a real but remote concern, dimly perceived through the gauze of daily life. P.92

​

To be an environmentalist, to see what others refuse to see, is to struggle every day against hostility, denial and, above all, indifference. It is to find yourself fighting almost everyone in a position of power. It is to find yourself locked in a constant cycle of determination and despair. P.93

​

For this ingenious rubbish... we have exchanged a world of natural wonders: coral reefs and ice sheets, rainforests and wetlands, whales and rhinos, bees and birdsong, streams and meadows, and all the tiny marvels whose loss is seldom recorded. For this junk, we have reduced our chances of survival. P.95

​

Economic growth... depends on the expansion of demand for pointless goods and services... To succeed, we must destroy ourselves P.96

​

refuting a dominant frame serves only to reinforce it. To displace it, we must create a new one. P.96

​

It turns out that treating the living planet, the core economy, the commons, energy, materials, and most of the world’s people as white space on the map, then praying for the divine intervention of the invisible hand and hoping for the best, does not succeed. Who knew? P.100

​

Excluded from decision-making, we are reduced to passive recipients of whatever distorted account the media chooses to produce. Everything, across the entire term of office, is justified by reference to a single decision made on a single day. A finegrained democratic control over the decisions affecting our lives is denied to us. P.117

​

‘far more people are willing to step up if you ask them to do something big to win something big than … if you asked them to do something small to win something small’. P.131

​

The idea of a march followed by speeches is not inherently a bad one, as long as its purposes are kept in sight at every moment: to inspire, to inform, and then to direct the crowd to action, by which I mean a specific task rather than a vague call to ‘rise up’. P.136

​

Most people are socially minded, empathetic and altruistic. They would prefer to live in a world in which everyone is treated with respect and decency... But a small handful, using lies and distractions and confusion, stifle this latent desire for change. P.140 

​

When we emerge from the age of loneliness and alienation, from an obsession with competition and extreme individualism, from the worship of image and celebrity and power and wealth, we will find a person waiting for us. It is a person better than we might have imagined, whose real character has been suppressed. It is the one who lives inside us, who has been there all along. P.144

.

When and where you are born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were make a significant difference in how well you do in the world. P.175-76

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​

.

.

.

"The world we perceive is characterized by great diversity, but this diversity is not fundamental; fundamentally the world is a unity... Thus we find at the very beginning of philosophy the assertion that there exist two worlds, the 'real' and the 'apparent', that everything is 'really' something else and not what it 'appears' to be." P.12

​

"In his best recorded moments Schopenhauer understands more vividly than anyone the suffering involved in life and the need felt by all created things for love and sympathy." P.34

​

"Just as we are conscious not of the healthiness of our whole body but only the little place where the shoe pinches, so we think not of the totality of our successful activities but of some insignificant trifle or other which continues to vex us." P.41

​

"The most effective consolation in every misfortune and every affliction is to observe others who are more unfortunate than we: and everyone can do this." P.42

​

"The happiness of a given life is not to be measured according to the joys and pleasures it contains but according to the absence of the positive element, the absence of suffering." P.43

​

"If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? Would each of us not rather have felt so much pity for the coming generations as to prefer to spare it the burden of existence, or at least not wish to take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?" P.47

​

"From this point of view one might consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres. However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes." P.50

​

"To our amazement we suddenly exist, after having for countless millennia not existed; in a short while we will again not exist, also for countless millennia." P.51

​

"

"As consumers we have the right to know what we are paying for, and as active participants in the exploitation of animals we also have a moral obligation to confront the truth about the choices we make." P.5 

​

"People often call vegans extremists, and yet veganism is merely living by the principle that if I am against cruelty then I will do what I can to avoid perpetuating systems that cause physical and mental harm to animals. It is a clear indictment of how ingrained our state of cognitive dissonance is that we see attempts at moral consistency as signs of extremism. Is it not strange that we call those who kill dogs animal abusers, those who kill pigs normal and those who kill neither extremists?" P.15

​

"The real problem is our mentality, a mentality that judges some lives to be less important because of the pleasure we get from consuming their flesh or wearing their skin. We have allowed our physical and intellectual capabilities to make us tyrants over every other species on this planet. I have heard it said before that to the animals we are the devils of this planet and this world is their hell, a place of subjugation and pain. I can't see any rational reason why this isn't the case." P.20

​

"The reality is there is no such thing as happy exploitation, happy mutilations or happy forced impregnations. And there is no such thing as a happy farm animal, as abuse and exploitation is an inherent and fundamental part of what we do to animals, regardless of how they are farmed... These labels may make us feel better as consumers, but every animal will still one day meet the knife hanging in the slaughterhouse."  P.48

​

"About half of all the beef consumed comes from the dairy industry. So while I did not realise it at the time, replacing meat with halloumi when I went vegetarian wasn't stopping cows from being slaughtered. The truth is, the dairy industry is very much the meat industry, just with added years of cruelty before the cows reach the slaughterhouse." P.67

​

"As a society, we condemn people who kill animals. If someone stabbed a dog, we would presume that they were either mentally unwell or an evil person. However, we expect people who spend upwards of 60 hours a week repetitively stabbing chickens, pigs, cows and lambs to hang up their bloody aprons at the end of the day and then just integrate back into normal society. The emotional burden of doing the work that almost nobody else wants to do because of its violent nature and doing it because you feel you have no other choice and are therefore trapped must inevitably lead to desensitization, repression and anger for many." P.92 

​

"It is ironic that so many films and TV shows for kids feature the animals that we farm and kill by the billions. Peppa Pig is a well-known example, as is Shaun The Sheep, both beloved by children. Parents would be understandably outraged if Peppa was forced into a gas chamber in one episode or Shaun had his throat cut. And yet most parents are paying for these things to happen to real animals and feeding them to their children, who probably aren't even aware that the sausages they had for dinner came from a pig." P.189

​

"As children, our views of animals are very different to those we have as we grow older. Children don't evaluate the lives of animals based on what they can do for us or what we can take from them; instead, they values them simply because of their existence." P.189

​

"We all live by values given to us by the societies and cultures that we were raised in, reinforced by our parents and peers, and rationalised and defended by our cognitive biases. However, society has always progressed because we have challenged the dominant paradigms and ingrained norms. The stagnation of progress comes from apathy, complacency and the refusal to critically reflect. We often look back through humanity's short history in disbelief at the way that we have acted in the past. Future generations will do the same when they reflect on the actions of our contemporary society unless we do the work that is required to shed our past transgressions. That work is still ongoing and in many regards is just beginning." P.261

"You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water."

​

"I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking."

"Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter."

"A final, humorous point. Where Dr P. might mistake his wife for a hat Macrae's patient, also unable to recognise his wife, needed her to identify herself by a visual marker, by '... a conspicuous article of clothing, such as a large hat'."

"Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened."

"The findings are in keeping with something called self-determination theory, which holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered “intrinsic” to human happiness and far outweigh “extrinsic” values such as beauty, money, and status"

"...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution."

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

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The true impact of Undivided was not as a prejudice reduction program, but rather as a learning experience that inspired action... People needed those friendships and groups to cultivate and sustain the courage to act. P.225

Racism could operate without racists when the unspoken social mores of a community did the work for them. P.74​

​​

The word radical actually comes from the idea of being rooted. Change is radical not when it is extreme, but when it makes change from the roots up. P.239

​

In many evangelical megachurches, small groups like the Justice Team were the place where congregants pushed one another to be the kind of people they wanted to be but were scared to become. P.144

​

If the individuals strike out on isolated journeys of antiracism, but allow the families, workplaces, faith institutions, social groups, and neighborhoods they inhabit to sustain the status quo, change always remains fragile. P.161​​

​

In a society plagued by disinformation and distrust, researchers found that nothing was more effective than personal experience in pushing people to see old things with new eyes. But they often needed others to make meaning of what they saw. P.224​

​

People were forced to reexamine who they were, what they believed, what they must do because of what they believed - and what they were willing to risk. P.238​

​

Systems as complex as racism in America do not change when disconnected people without any roots in a community yell a little louder or reshuffle a few priorities. Instead, it changes when people rooted in their own interests and connected to one another organize themselves into just structures that enable them to put their hands on the complex levers of change. P.239

Not seeing race does little to deconstruct racist structures or materially improve the conditions which people of colour are subject to daily. In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon – earned or not – because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system. P.84

​

How can I define white privilege? It’s so difficult to describe an absence. And white privilege is an absence of the negative consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost, an absence of ‘less likely to succeed because of my race’. P.86

​

But white privilege is the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it. P.87

​

Pretending that everything is fine helps no one. P.111

​

For a long time now, far-right political groups have hijacked the anti-colonial struggles of native people in America and Australia to create a story of the embattled indigenous white British, under siege from immigration. P.120

​

If Katie Hopkins, with help from the Sun newspaper, publishes a column describing desperate refugees trying to travel to Britain as cockroaches, then we need a cultural commentator that advocates for true compassion and total open borders. Not the kind of wishy-washy liberalism that harps on about the cultural and economic contributions of migrants to this country as though they are resources to be sucked dry, but someone who speaks in favour of migrants and open borders with the same force of will with which Hopkins despises them. P.134

​

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign was not calling for Rhodes to be erased from history. Instead they were questioning whether he should be so overtly celebrated. P.131

​

Rhodes Must Fall was a small-scale example of what racial injustice looks like in Britain. It looks normal. It is pedestrian. It is unquestioned. It’s just a part of the landscape, you might walk past it every day. P.132

​

White people are so used to seeing a reflection of themselves in all representations of humanity at all times, that they only notice it when it’s taken away from them. P.140

​

‘I think white people get defensive when you call them white,’ she tells me over Skype, ‘because they’ve internalised a message that goes it’s rude to point out somebody else’s race. P.111

​

But proclaiming post-racial success was a way to bury any discussion of racism – to insist that we had actually pressed fast forward, and everything was ok now. P.213

There is no point in keeping quiet because you want to be liked. Often, there will be no one fighting your corner but yourself. It was black feminist poet Audre Lorde who said: ‘your silence will not protect you.’ Who wins when we don’t speak? Not us. P.187

Attacking racist frame, form, functions and codes with no words to describe them can make you feel like you are the only one who sees the problem. We need to see racism as structural in order to see its insidiousness. We need to see how it seeps, like a noxious gas, into everything. P.222
 

Since we can scarcely see what is happening before our eyes, it is not surprising that events at a slight distance are utterly invisible. P.15

​

Today's Republicans, meanwhile, have moved so far right in their dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs. Instead, they have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there,  just not an organized political force: evangelicals, nativists, and the victims of the forms of globalization designed to set working people around the world in competition with one another while protecting the privileged. P.265

​

The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters). P.22

​

If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we might ask which criminals are "wanted the world over." P.30

It's a mistake to judge an idea only by what's possible today or what has already been done. P.54

​

What we eat is more important than where it comes from. Way less than 1 per cent of the carbon impact of food is from food miles. It's not something to stress over. P.189

​

We actually need to emancipate animals. I know that's a big ask right now, but one day it won't look so. P.190

​

Imagine rewilding half the landmass of our country.
Our food choice can do this. P.192

​

Governments need to tackle demand for animal products too. It's based on habit and false marketing. P.190

​

We spend £3 billion a year in Britain on subsidies to make this food artificially cheap. P.194

​

Renewable energy by contrast is universally available, it occurs in all parts of the world. It won't ever run out, not while our sun lasts, so forever in this case means a few billion years. It is in all respects abundant - an endless supply, everywhere. We don't have to compete or fight for it, and we don't need global markets setting the price of it. Renewable energy can democratise energy. P.192/193

​

Literally millions of tonnes of sewage have been dumped into our rivers and seas because it's cheaper for the companies that run our water monopolies. Privatisation is a three-decade experiment with no success stories. P.206

​

Scientists reckoned July 2023 was the Earth's hottest month in 120,000 years. P.215

​

it's a single-use fuel and it runs out... where's the security in that? P.223

"advocacy is neglected. This is because there's usually no commercial incentive to spread socially important ideas. Instead, advocacy is mainly pursued by the small number of people willing to dedicate their careers to making the world a better place." P.60

​

"Taking a stable job and doing advocacy part-time can be effective because you don't need to worry about funding your advocacy, which helps you to stay independent and take bigger risks." P.61

​

"the most effective approach for you will be one which is a good fit with your skills and motivation." P.70

​

"you can have a greater lifetime impact by first investing in yourself... to build [flexible] career capital." P.79

​

"Knowing the downside makes it less scary, and having a back-up plan makes it more likely you'll cope." P.111

​

"Not changing course when a better option exists is one of the most common decision-making mistakes identified by psychologists and is called 'sunk cost fallacy' or 'status quo bias'." P.112

​

"If you can prove that you'll get the results the employer most values, everything else is much less important." P.121

​

"Many people fill up their CVs with everything they've done, but it's usually better to pick one or two most impressive achievements and focus on those. It sounds better, it makes it more likely you'll cover it, and it makes it more likely your audience will remember it." P.124

​

"Many studies have shown that writing down when you'll do a task makes it more likely you'll actually do it - it's called an 'implementation intention'. P.128

​

"The basics are getting enough sleep, exercising, eating right and maintaining your closest friendships." P.144

​

"If you're suffering from a mental health issue... make dealing with it or learning to cope your top priority. It is one of the best investments you can ever make both for your own sake and your ability to help others." P.145

​

"Try to develop habits that will let you build connections automatically." P.149

​

"Often the quickest way to learn a skill is just to do it, while getting feedback from experts." P.152

​

"the availability heuristic, causing us to focus on options that are readily available; anchoring, a tendency to overweight the first piece of information given; status quo bias, an irrational preference for the current state of affairs; and the sunk cost fallacy, the tendency to assign more weight to options we've already invested time and effort into." P.157

​

"You need to be able to identify when your preference for a certain career is for good reason, and when it's just because of past commitments." P.158

​

"having engaging work that absorbs your attention, working with people you like, the job meeting your basic needs (with regards to salary, working hours, etc.) and it fitting with the rest of your life." P.162

​

"You'll learn fastest in jobs where you receive good mentorship." P.165

"The long-term impact of being whupped - then forced to hush and even smile about it - turned me into a world - class people pleaser for most of my life. It would not have taken me half a lifetime to learn to set boundaries and say 'no' with confidence had I been nurtured differently." P.12

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​

“In order to build the kind of power that creates change, we needed a direct action campaign that harnessed a series of actions into an escalating sequence. The typical protest is organizationally hollow, unsustainable, and not really a problem for a strong opponent, which above all fears our staying power.” P.5

​

“I know of no country that has undergone major change through one-off protests. Opponents realize that no matter how many people participate in sporadic protests, participants will go home again. Winning major demands requires staying power, as this guide will share, much else besides.” P.6

​

“Nonviolent campaigns know exactly what they want.” P.6

​

“Campaigners also know who can make the decision they need. Alice Paul led the National Woman’s party direct action campaign for suffrage and targeted President Woodrow Wilson.” P.7

​

“American mass media offer almost no information about how nonviolent campaigns win or what their strategic choices are. Media may show dramatic actions, but it reveals very little context. We learn nothing…
The result is not surprising. We’re left with a public that is ill-informed on what its options are when facing an authoritarian president or a wave of policy changes that diminish human rights and well-being and planetary sustainability.” P.9 

​

“Campaigns that used nonviolent direct action had twice the success rate of struggles that used violence.” P.10

​

“Heat creates volatility, in metal and in society… it makes possible something new to replace the rigid oppressive structures.” P.16

​

Build a movement of movements powerful enough to dislodge the 1 percent from dominance. That’s what the Swedes and Norwegians did. Movements cooperated because they saw that their individual goals were opposed by the same force - the economic elite.” P.19

​

“More people are motivated to go with you if they know where you’re going.” P.21

​

“Fighting defensively [e.g. hanging on to previously achieved gains] will not lead you to victory against a determined opponent… ‘the best defense is an offense.’” P.22

​

“Setting new goals for life enhancement and then fighting vigorously for them.” [the offensive] P.24

​

“If we don’t create space for people to show up honestly, the eventual backlash in the group would be severe.” P.30

​

“The quickest way to accelerate people’s growth is by reinforcing positive behaviours…
I could have started attacking Jim for his perspective. But I figured my ally role was to help him grow. I asked him where he got that idea.” P.33

​

“As the campaign grew with a series of creative direct actions, it created a political power center uncontrolled by any party politician. This is generally intolerable for politicians since their art is indeed the art of wielding and controlling power…
The result was the politicians actually approached the Caino-Free campaigners and asked how they could be helpful.” P.52

​

“You can have the most elegantly pointed demand in the world, but if it cannot move people to care, it is not the right one.” P.57

​

“The truth is that many - probably most - campaigns win through allies stepping up and neutral parties changing into allies. Opponents who see themselves getting isolated may be tempted at that point to make concessions.”  P.79

​

“The FBI head in the 1960s, J. Edgar Hoover, called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘the most dangerous man in America.’ And those who ruled to British Empire considered Gandhi their biggest threat to the wealth flowing into Britain from the colonies.” P.94

​

“The best actions are those that reveal the truth.” P.97

​

“It was shocking for them to see nicely dressed black college students reading their textbooks while sitting at a lunch counter waiting for coffee, when they could get takeout coffee at the back door. Doubly shocking to see white men beating them up. Two secrets we exposed at once: black people want freedom, and segregation requires violence.” P.97

​

“Millions of slogans on picket signs could not do what a simple sit-in could do. Campaigns have power when we get beyond words - when we show rather than tell.” P.97

“Action logic is showing rather than telling… the action immediately makes sense.” P.101

“That’s one challenge: activists share more news about the latest awful thing than we do about how creative people are making change.” P.103

“Effectiveness depends more often on drama than on sheer numbers… 
So another problem is we emphasize numbers over drama.” P.104

“Human beings grow through going beyond their comfort zones and, with appropriate support and safeguards, trying new behaviours.” P.116

“Being honest and vulnerable helps other people to step up.” P.126

“The videos of the police brutality electrified the nation, woke up uncounted potential allies who until then had been asleep, and energized the movement…
‘The paradox of repression’ is what sociologists call this dynamic. It happens when the brutality intended to stop a movement instead gives it energy and strength.” P.137

“Use your bodies intentionally… when in doubt, sit down… The activists sitting on the ground created the largest possible contrast, and it is this contrasting behaviour that frames the activists positively in the eyes of the next segment of the spectrum of allies.” P.141

Just as taught in martial arts, nonviolent campaigners use the force of the other side to our advantage.” P.151

“Civil disobedience was central: by the time of their victory suffragist Julia Emory had been arrested 34 times… In jail, they often refused to work and went on hunger strikes.” P.157

“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobolized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.” P.179

“Activists thought if they simply described vividly enough how terrible climate change is, or how unjust racism or sexism or poverty is, masses of people would reorder their priorities and join them. That’s not the way it works… where are you going?”  P.179

“My hope is that you, if you are not already acting boldly, will experience the joy and empowerment I have found by my decision to act in history rather than watch it go by. P.185

"Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” P.89

​

"Just as a doctor will occasionally reopen a wound, because a dangerous infection hovers beneath the half-healed surface, the revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place.” P.181

​

“Injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” P.97

“Injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.” P.101

“Like his predecessors, the Negro was willing to risk martyrdom in order to move and stir the social conscience of his community and the nation. Instead of submitting to surreptitious cruelty in thousands of dark jail cells and on countless shadowed street corners, he would force his oppressor to commit his brutality openly - in the light of day - with the rest of the world looking on.” P.34

“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation… Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.” P.90
 

“A nonviolent army has a magnificent universal quality.” P.35

“The real issue is whether in the great mass the dominant characteristics are decency, honor and courage.” P.43

“Direct action is not a substitute for work in the courts and the halls of government. Bringing about passage of a new and broad law by a city council, state legislature or the Congress, or pleading cases before the courts of the land, does not eliminate the necessity for bringing about the mass dramatization of injustice in front of a city hall. Indeed, direct action and legal action complement one another; when skillfully employed, each becomes more effective.” P.40

“Each of us expected that setbacks would be part of the ongoing effort. There is no tactical theory so neat that a revolutionary struggle for a share of power can be won merely by pressing a row of buttons. Human beings with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of a social movement. They must make mistakes and learn from them, make more mistakes and learn anew. They must taste defeat as well as success, and discover how to live with each. Time and action are our teachers.” P.41

“In the mind of the average man, there was little cause for concern.” P.5

“Certainly Birmingham has its decent white citizens who privately deplored the maltreatment of Negroes. But they remained publicly silent. It was silence born of fear - fear of social, political and economic reprisals. The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.” P.51

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” P.98

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” P.96

“We proved to them that we needed no weapons - not so much as a toothpick. We proved that we possessed the most formidable weapon of all - the conviction that we were right. We had the protection of our knowledge that we were more concerned about realizing our righteous aims than about saving our skins.” P.67

“In fact, virtually all the coverage in the national press at first had been negative, picturing us as irresponsible hotheads who had plunged into a situation just when Birmingham was getting ready to change overnight into Paradise.” P.71-72

“My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” P.90

“The words and actions of parliaments and statesmen, of kings and prime ministers, movie stars and athletes, were shifted away from the front pages to make room for the history-making deeds of the servants, the drivers, the elevator operators and ministers.” P.8-9

“We were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that it was obvious to us that the courts of Alabama had misused the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice and segregation. Consequently, we could not, in good conscience, obey their findings.” P.78

“It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” P.87

“The Negro minority will unite for political action for the same reason that it will seek to function in alliance with other groups - because in this way it can compel the majority to listen.” P.179

"The enemy the Negro faced became not the individual who had oppressed him but the evil system which permitted that individual to do so." P.35

​

"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" P.101

​

"The unforgivable default of our society has been its failure to apprehend the assassins. It is a harsh judgement, but undeniably true, that the cause of the indifference was the identity of the victims." P.172

"in spite of everything - in spite of their terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years of never complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened - they might have uttered some word of protest. But at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating..." P.89

Most psychological and spiritual traditions teach that integrity is a barometer of psychological health and emotional maturity and that increasing integrity is a fundamental goal of human development. P.43

"One begins by identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way."

​

"Whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has very little do with our absolute conditions but, rather it is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have."

​

"We can increase our feeling of life satisfaction by comparing ourselves to those who are less fortunate than us by reflecting on all the things we have."

​

"If you possess this inner quality, a calmness of mind... then even if you lack various external facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life."

​

"The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not whether it gives you a(n) immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences."

​

"The true antidote of greed is contentment. If you have a strong sense of contentment, it doesn't matter whether you obtain the object or not, either way, you are still content."

​

"But there is a better approach: framing any decision we face by asking ourselves, 'Will it bring me happiness?' That simple question can be a powerful tool in helping us skilfully conduct all areas of our lives... it puts a new slant on things... shifts the focus from what we are denying ourselves to what we are seeking - ultimate happiness."

​

"The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart."

​

"If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow openness with other people. It creates a positive and friendly atmosphere."

​

​

"Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."

​

"The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness - rather it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it."

​

"Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next... your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it."

​

"You are not in control of your mind - because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts. You can do what you decide to do - but you cannot decide what you will decide to do."

​

"I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics - by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck."

​

​

"How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honourable finally become, for you, the same."

"When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers, and try to help him." - Leo Tolstoy

"The secret is here in the present. If you
pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve
on the present, what comes later will also be better."

"When we are uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd... frequently the crowd is mistaken because they are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof."

"It is an implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others and our readiness to consider their interests ought not to depend on what they are like or on what abilities they may possess... But the basic element—the taking into account of the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be—must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman."

.

"I remember Julian's words clearly, indeed gongingly, that all of us, especially artists, need to "live in the times we're in" rather than continue to make art or write books that don't try, at least, to come to terms with the times." P.121

"If this work is a work of collaborative labour, then it is a model for the work we will have to do together now and into the future, for the world that is coming to us, whether we want it or not." P.126

"Could I reveal to her the real things that scared her: not brown people, not iffy untruths about stolen elections, but the older, more banal and universal harms buried deep down, of a frightened Inner Child... It was these real unhealed traumas that kept her grasping for a float in the shape of a TV remote, anything to keep her above the waterline, a fastened thing to grab to; but in doing so, she was having her blowholes of anxiety exploited and redirected by the Alt-Govt and MediaFash towards more fruitful (for them) targets (and didn't they know it.)" P.103

"Yet that was the MediaFash's greatest success, wasn't it, at the behest of Corruption Capitalism, to coerce people into thinking that their traumas came from the Unknown Other out there, and not from fears much, much closer to home." P.104

"These stories they made up, my sister and my dad, were attempts to make sense of an unsafe world. Something certain they could go by, even if it not true. But at least the story was theirs. It couldn't be challenged, not really (another Trumplandism, I noted). It was, for all intents and purpose, a reliable history. A story that they could depend on when all other stories fell away. And once they'd repeated it enough times, it became theirs, became them. It didn't matter if it was based on a lie. A lie will do, as long as it tells us who we are. Which is, in the end, perhaps all they ever wanted. To know who they were." P.105

"I understood, then, that it was not my job to go digging for wells or worms; if she wanted to do her own digging, then that was down to her, as mine had been down to me; rather, I was to play my part in building whatever relationship we could in the present (whatever present we were given) on whatever ground was under us." P.107

This was true of many gay men and women, whether in the closet or out, because nobody who was out hadn't first spent many years in. You hid from the people who knew you best; you were a character actor so convincing your own mother was fooled. P.93

​

I was no longer the man who hid and lied to myself and to others, always alert to the potential for physical violence. Now I walked and talked in a way that was natural for me. P121

​

A national poll that fall found that more than a third of Americans had changed their opinions about the community for the worse since the onset of AIDS. The Los Angeles Times reported that the community's political heyday was over, when in truth what the community tumbled from was already the bottom rung. P.201

​

Most in attendance were middle-class liberals who had never taken a public stand for their rights. P.202

​

'Many of us had to live a lie too long,' he began. 'We spent agonizing years believing lies about ourselves, hideous lies that fed self-hate, that ate away at us until we feared that any minute we would be destroyed' P.202

​

There is no place for journalistic filth like that in any sane society. P.204

​

The collective slanders against the community still continued from the highest levels, but now the perpetrators had to contend with the response of GLAAD'S nettlesome foot soldiers. P.218 

​

I'm also tired of people coming up to me on the street and saying, 'Thank you for what you're doing and saying.' They mean it as a compliment, I know. But now I scream back, 'Why aren't you doing it and saying it, too? Why are there so few people out there screaming and yelling? You're dying too!... Yes, most of all, I'm tired of you. P.271

​

They had formed an affinity group called Testing the Limits, a video collective committed to making documentary films and other creative responses to the crisis. P.323

​

From the start of the FDA campaign, it was decided to pursue a kind of good cop/bad cop approach with the agency. Barr would lead the good cop team, reasonably presenting the grievances to officials and demanding full and unconditional compliance with the Watkins Commission recommendations, while Bordowitz's strategy would be to menace the agency with news about the upcoming march on a regular basis. The implication was that an invasion of unruly activists could be avoided if the FDA capitulated. P.325

​

[After the Wall Street protests] The following Monday, admitting to being pinioned by protesters, Burroughs Wellcome slashed the price of AZT for a second time, finally reaching the price range demanded by ACT UP. It took another seven months for the criminal trespass case to come to a head. A judge, ruling that the defendants had acted 'in the interests of justice,' dismissed all charges. P.382

​

On the battlefield, one cannot step over so many bodies without imagining one's own lifeless cheek on the ground. P.434

​

Hughes, in the same state, had no tolerance for anyone who could go about her ordinary life in the middle of such devastation. P.480

I could sense something else growing with me: a very strong feeling of wanting to live until I die. P.193

​

Whenever I relax my hold on my desires, they seem to be fulfilled more easily. May I never forget that lesson. P.133

​

We learn in stillness, so we remember when the storm comes. P.144

Because, suddenly, life ends. And then it will matter how I chose to live it. P.208

​

'Oh, come on,' the cousin coaxed, 'no one will even know.'
Ajahn Passano looked up at him and replied quietly and honestly:
'I will know.' P.204

​

Anger arises, but nothing does it occupy. P.225

​

If you always cling to what you think you already know, you make yourself inaccessible, and you miss out on so much. P.78

​

Trying to cling to life is like trying to cling to water. It's in its nature to be in constant flux. P.136

​

I can now see that as I become better at listening inwardly, as I work on making the stillness my own, something has begun to shimmer. Something that always seems to be with me. Something that wishes me well. P.123

​

That is extra important when things get hard. If you can, be with people who reflect your light. P.155

​

Human life is short. When we truly understand that, when we stop taking each other and what we have for granted, then we move through our own lives differently. P.208

.

"like the problem-solving algorithms, it's easy to get stuck if we insist on never going downhill." P.13

"Even a solitary dissenting voice broke the spell and the experimental subjects felt much more able to express their own dissent." P.52

"People think harder when they fear their views may be challenged by outsiders." P.53

​

"constantly remind yourself of the benefits of tension, which can be easy to forget when all you want it a quiet life." P.63

​

"'People suddenly put into 'good design' did not seem to wake up and love it' he wrote. What they loved instead was control over the space in which they had to live or work." P.94

​

"Sometimes the mess produces  something worth having - even, or especially, if it wasn't what you were aiming for." P.105

​

"A great conversation is a rare joy because it is full of surprises and thus requires constant improvisation." P.116

​

"if you could disorient your opponent, forcing him to stop and figure out what was going on, you gained an advantage. And if you do this relentlessly your opponent would be almost paralysed with confusion." P.144

​

"Sometimes a target reflects yesterday's problems, not today's. The world tends to change faster than bureaucracies can keep up, which causes problems for any organisation that has lashed itself to an unbending framework of performance measures." P.170

“Animals do not exist to serve human ends: animals are not servants or slaves of human beings, but have their own moral significance, their own subjective existence, which must be respected. Animals, as much as humans, are individual beings… The only truly effective protection against animal exploitation requires shifting from welfarism and ecological holism to a moral framework that acknowledges animals as the bearers of certain inviolable rights.” P.4

.

"People are taught to believe in the story from early childhood. They hear it from their parents, their teachers, their neighbours and the general culture long before they develop the intellectual and emotional independence necessary to question and verify such stories. By the time their intellect matures, they are so heavily invested in the story that they are far more likely to use their intellect to rationalise the story than doubt it."

"When you inflict suffering on yourself in the name of some story, it gives you a choice: 'Either the story is true, or I am a gullible fool.' When you inflict suffering on others, you are also given a choice: 'Either the story is true, or I am a cruel villain.' And just as we don't want to admit we are fools, we also don't want to admit we are villains, so we prefer to believe that the story is true."

"They needed only to rise up... if they chose they could blow the party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet!" P.57

"Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?... Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." P.58

​

"The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw them into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death." P.59

​

"She was very young, he thought, she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing." P.106

​

"In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird." P.121

​

"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance." P.147 

​

"There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. The causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree." P.159

​

"The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed." P.159

​

"We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves." P.197

​

"It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next be unconscious of the crudest logical errors." P.214

.

"When we look back on history, we can see that many of the beliefs we accept today as rational, ethical, and essential to a functional society were dismissed, invalidated, ridiculed, and even met with violent hostility."

​

"Social transformation is not about simply eliminating a particular behaviour; it is about transforming the system that gives rise to that behaviour in the first place."

​

"The metanarrative, or overarching narrative, of social powerarchies (and all powerarchies) is that there is a hierarchy of moral worth, that certain groups are more worthy of moral consideration than others.

​

"When people become aware not only of the consequences of a social powerarchy... but also of the cognitive distortions of the system, they may be better able to make choices that reflect what they authentically think and feel rather than what they've been conditioned to think and feel."

​

"One way to recognize powerarchical thinking in yourself is to ask yourself whether you're perceiving another as morally inferior and whether you're feeling the corresponding emotion of contempt."

"Make a balance sheet: 'How often have I felt lovingness towards another person today?" On the other side of the sheet put: 'How often have I felt anger, hurt, resentment, rejection, fear, anxiety today, when confronting other people?"

​

"Compassion is called for at all times, not only when tragedies have befallen people."

​

"It doesn't matter what they say, whether they are interested in you or whether they have any loving-kindness themselves. None of that counts. The only thing that matters is one's own heart, and that is the one thing to remember."

"Considering the great hurdles we face socially and environmentally, the commercial discourse we surround ourselves with not only ignores our current reality but actively works against it by distracting us from each other in favour of ourselves."

​

"... the purpose and consequence seems to be the creation of a mood of restless dissatisfaction with what we have got and who we are so that we go out and buy more."

"We humans fail to see the evil in the world because we are so distracted by shiny and twinkling motives that we don't notice the ugliness beneath them."

"The true moral test of humanity... lies in its relations to those who are at its mercy: the animals."

​

"Time heals, but it does so through erasure. This book is an attempt to record the lesson before it is gone."

"There was a rather heavy bill for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely
old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when unnecessary
things are our only necessities"

"The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition."

"Fiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. We can't play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can't enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But stories are just tools. They shouldn't become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars `to make a lot of money for the cooperation' or 'to protect the national interest'. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our life in their service."