Abbie Hoffman Quotes

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

You are talking to a leftist. I believe in the redistribution of wealth and power in the world. I believe in universal hospital care for everyone. I believe that we should not have a single homeless person in the richest country in the world. And I believe that we should not have a C.I.A. that goes around overwhelming governments and assassinating political leaders, working for tight oligarchies around the world to protect the tight oligarchy here at home.

Understand that legal and illegal are political, and often arbitrary, categorizations; use and abuse are medical, or clinical, distinctions.

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.

It is always the young that make the change. You don't get these ideas when you're middle-aged. Young people have daring, creativity, imagination and personal computers. Above all, what you have as young people that's vitally needed to make social change, is impatience. You want it to happen now. There have to be enough people that say, ‘We want it now, in our lifetime.’ This is your moment. This is your opportunity. Be adventurists in the sense of being bold and daring. Be opportunists and seize this opportunity, this moment in history, to go out and save our country. It's your turn now.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.

I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning. I think I've learned that lesson twice now. The essence of successful revolution, be it for an individual, a community of individuals, or a nation, depends on accepting that challenge.

Peace is a very complicated concept. When the lion gobbles up the lamb and wipes his lips, then there's peace. Well, I ain't for that peace at all.

The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great.

My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.

Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them.

Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.

The best way to educate oneself is to become part of the revolution.

When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out.

I learned one thing; you never do anything for fame or money. You only do things 'cause they're fun or good. If you can combine the two at the same time, you can make a contribution to the world and have a lot of happiness.

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.

Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual.

It's too late. We can't win, they've gotten too powerful.

The idea that media is there to educate us, or to inform us, is ridiculous because that's about tenth or eleventh on their list.

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.

Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.

Maintain a sense of humor. People who take themselves too seriously are power-crazy. If they win it will be haircuts for all. Beware of power freaks.

The key to organizing an alternative society is to organize people around what they can do, and more importantly, what they want to do.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

Usually when you ask somebody in college why they are there, they'll tell you it's to get an education. The truth of it is, they are there to get the degree so that they can get ahead in the rat race. Too many college radicals are two-timing punks. The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.

Every rock or molotov cocktail thrown should make a very obvious political point. Random violence produces random propaganda results. Why waste even a rock?

Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps.

The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.

Action is the only reality; not only reality, but morality as well.

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!

Life-actors never rehearse and need no script. A life-actor uses whatever he has available, nothing more, nothing less.

What if when they called a war, no one went?

In this state, dig it, you get twenty years for sale of dope to a minor. You only get five to ten for manslaughter. So like, the thing is, if you're selling to a kid and cops come, shoot the kid real quick!

Fantasy is the only truth.

I just want to do what has to be done so much. I'll never understand why everyone else doesn't feel this way.

If you don't have sex and you don't do drugs, your rock 'n' roll better be awfully good.

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

I was probably the only professed revolutionary ever referred to as "cute."

It's going to be a combination Scopes trial, revolution in the streets, Woodstock Festival and People's Park, all rolled into one.

..you just get stoned, get the ideas in your head and then do 'em. And don't bullshit. I mean that's the thing about doin' that guerrilla theatre. You be prepared to die to prove your point.

Once you get the right image the details aren't that important.

Structure is more important than content in the transmission of information.

The work that the kids saw around them was so odious, so boring, so worthless that they came to regard WORK as the only dirty four-letter word in the English language.

The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.