Abbie Hoffman
38 quotes
Biography
Abbot Howard Hoffman was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement.
"The only way to support a revolution is to make your own."
"There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!"
"The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going."
"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!"
"I feel like a famous Indian Chief of the Fagowee nations, who led his tribe for 40 years in the desert amidst starvation, hunger, famine, strife, plague — finally staggered up to the top of this mountain, drug crazed, looked out and pounded his chest and said, "Where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?""
"I only regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country."
"If this guy is God, then this is the God that the United States of America deserves."
"For six years, the only consistent thing about our national drug policy has been its inconsistency. Harsher penalties, urine testing, hysteria, budget cuts and the simplistic "Just Say No!' campaign (the equivalent of telling manic depressives to "just cheer up") have returned drug education and treatment to the Reefer Madness era."
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"I see Judaism as a way of life. Sticking up for the underdog. Being an outsider. A critic of society. The kid on the corner who says the emperor has no clothes on. The Prophet."
"In the nineteen-sixties, apartheid was driven out of America. Legal segregation — Jim Crow — ended. We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. Now, it doesn't matter who sits in the Oval Office. But the big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong … and we were right! I regret nothing!"
"It's embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List."
"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."
"Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual."
"STRUCTURE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONTENT IN THE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION. It is the same as saying "the medium is the message.""
"THE KEY TO ORGANIZING AN ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY IS TO ORGANIZE PEOPLE AROUND WHAT THEY CAN DO AND MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO DO."
"You ask, "What about the innocent bystanders?" But we are in a time of revolution. If you are a bystander, you are not innocent."
"The best way to educate oneself is to become part of the revolution."
"I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars."
"I think this is a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison."
"It's perhaps fitting that I write this introduction in jail."
"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."
"Your body is just one in a mass of cuddly humanity. 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. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn't allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power."
"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."
"My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce."