"The Whole World is Watching!
"
Source: Chant on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention, as the police were beating the demonstrators, passersby, and the media, who broadcast it all.
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"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
"
Abbie Hoffman
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| "We are here to make a better world. No amount of rationalization or blaming can preempt the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on this planet. The lesson of the '60s is that people who cared enough to do right could change history. We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death.
And we were right."
Abbie Hoffman
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"Life actors never rehearse and need no script. A life actor uses only what is available, nothing more, nothing less."
Abbie Hoffman
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"..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. "
Abbie Hoffman
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"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."
Abbie Hoffman
Source: Steal This Book
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"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. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave."
Abbie Hoffman
Source: Steal This Book
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"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."
Abbie Hoffman
Source: Steal This Book
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"There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!"
Abbie Hoffman
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"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.
"
Abbie Hoffman
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"Wouldn't you want to be indicted by the govenment for a high crime? It's a great thrill. It's an honor. It's a compliment. It's fun. I'm enjoying every minute of it!"
Abbie Hoffman
Source: The Sixties - by Richard Avedon
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"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."
Abbie Hoffman
Source: New York Times
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"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
Abraham Lincoln
Source: First Inaugural Address
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"Black people have tended to sever their identification with the white community and to become alienated from America. They no longer want to be part of the white man's society; they have ceased to accept the white man's standards of what is good or bad. This is a total rejection of integration as an ideal or an objective. Instead, the black man is trying to recapture a sense of identification with his own cultural heritage. This involves the rediscovery of Africa, the development of black consciousness, black pride, black unity, and at least the beginning of the development of black power."
Albert Cleage
Source: The Center Magazine - March 1968
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"Hell no, we won't go!
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Anti-war chant
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"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
"
Anti-war slogan
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"Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama.
"
Barry McGuire
Source: The Eve of Destruction
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"We all want to change the world."
Beatles
Source: Revolution
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"It's a fool who plays it cool by making this world a little colder.
"
Beatles
Source: Hey Jude
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"Killing a cop just because he's a cop, that'll happen. And that should happen. And there's nothing inhuman about it at all. It's survival. It's the most human thing in the world."
Bernadine Dohrn - Weatherman
Source: The Sixties - by Richard Avedon
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"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
Bertrand Russell
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"People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us. I think it's a healthy sign that there are demonstrators in the streets. They are raising the question of 'is the rich world giving back enough?'"
Bill Gates
Source: World Economic Forum, Feb. 2002
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"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
"
Bob Dylan
Source: Subterranean Homesick Blues
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"How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?
...How many deaths will it takes till he knows that too many people have died?"
Bob Dylan
Source: Blowin' in the Wind
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"The battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls."
Bob Dylan
Source: The Times they are a-changin'
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"Get up, stand up! Stand up for your right! Don't give up the fight!"
Bob Marley
Source: Get Up, Stand Up!
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"A thousand people in the street Singing songs and carrying signs..."
Buffalo Springfield
Source: For What it's Worth
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"There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind.
"
Buffalo Springfield
Source: For What it's Worth
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"It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no military son."
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Source: Fortunate Son
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"Soldiers are cutting us down!
"
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Source: Ohio
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"When I was marching with King down in Selma and Washington, when the racist pig, the fascist cop, was beating me over my head to the tune of "We Shall Overcome" - you see, had I been politically educated, I would have taken that club, you see, and beaten the hell out of him. I'm not thinking about myself. I'm thinking about my people. Because I'm not persecuted as an individual. I'm persecuted because I'm black."
David Brothers - Black Panther
Source: The Sixties - by Richard Avedon
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"General Motors wants crewcuts, punctuality and respectful conformity. Uncle Sam wants patriotic cannon fodder. A world like this deserves contempt. Only goodness in our generation can counter the decadence of the society we are inheriting. And our generation is good."
Deborah Smullyan
Source: High school graduation speech
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"It's an ideal existence. Out in the open. Berating the president of he United States... I'm free to thwart and torment the authorities - that is to say, I can get out my hostilities - because I'm protected in my conscience by the knowledge that what I'm doing is morally right. I've never been so relaxed. I've never been so happy."
Dr. Benjamin Spock
Source: The Sixties - by Richard Avedon
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"A black person has to develop a suspiciousness and defensive posture just to survive in America. He has to develop a 'healthy' adaptive 'cultural paranoia' which pushes him close to the line of mental illness."
Dr. William H. Grier
Source: Professor of Psychology
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"As a sapling bent low stores energy for a violent back-swing, blacks bent double by opperssion have stored energy in the form of rage, black rage, apocalyptic and final.
"
Dr. William H. Grier
Source: Black Rage
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"The struggle of our people for freedom has progressed to the form where all of us must take a stand either for or against the freedom of our people You are either with Your People or against them. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem."
Eldridge Cleaver
Source: To My Black Brothers In Vietnam
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"We have dedicated our lives, our blood, to the freedom and liberation of our people, and nothing, no force can stop us from achieving our goal. If it is necessary to destroy the United States of America, then let us destroy it with a smile on our faces."
Eldridge Cleaver
Source: To My Black Brothers In Vietnam
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"Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit. - "
Emma Goldman
Source: Patriotism (1911)
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"Revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past."
Fidel Castro
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"You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill a revolution."
Fred Hampton
Source: Speech
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"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass
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"If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with!"
Gov. Ronald Reagan (1970)
Source: Reagan's response to student unrest.
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"This is a very unforgiving country when you show this country its warts, when you hold the mirror up. If you happen not to share their beliefs, they'll kill you."
H. Rap Brown
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"Until the philosophy that holds one race superior, and another, inferior, is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war."
Haille Sellassie/Bob Marley
Source: War
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"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Hermann Goering
Source: The Nuremberg Trials
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"Off the Pigs!
"
Huey Newton
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"There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively - I am one with the people."
Huey Newton
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"I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people
"
Huey Newton, paraphrasing Che
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"We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism."
Huey P. Newton
Source: Interview with Huey P. Newton (1968)
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"The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation. "
Huey P. Newton
Source: Interview (1968)
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"Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny."
Huey P. Newton
Source: Interview (1968)
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"The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution."
Huey P. Newton
Source: Interview (1968)
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"There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
Jim Morrison
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"All we are saying is give peace a chance."
John Lennon
Source: Give Peace a Chance
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"Millions of mind guerrillas...
Raising the spirit of peace and love, not war."
John Lennon
Source: Mind Games
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"They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had."
Joni Mitchell
Source: California
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"All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes."
Joni Mitchell
Source: California
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"...we condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakeable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives."
June Jordan
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"What solidarity we do find exists despite the society, against all its realities, as an unending struggle between the innate decency of man and the innate indecency of the society. Can we imagine how men would behave if this decency could find full release, if society earned the respect, even the love of the individual? "
Lewis Herber
Source: Technology for Life (1969)
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"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Ghandi
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"The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else."
Malcolm X
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
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"American society is a bleak scene, but it is all a lot of us have to look forward to. Society povides no challenge. American society in the standard conception it has of itself is simply no longer exciting. The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change America...The "futures" and "careers" for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children."
Mario Savio
Source: An End to History (1963)
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"We 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. "
Martin Luther King Jr.
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"To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Source: Atlanta speech 8/15/67
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"Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Source: Atlanta speech 8/15/67
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"It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be. Indeed, they will be mentally healthier if they do not suppress rage, but vent it constructively and use its energy peacefully but forcefully to cripple the operations of an oppressive society. Civil disobedience can utilize the militance wasted in riots to seize clothes or groceries many do not even want."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Source: Atlanta speech 8/15/67
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"Up against the wall, Motherfucker!
"
MC5
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"I never know why these people talk to me. I would not talk to me."
Michael Moore
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"Look at mother nature on the run in the 1970's."
Neil Young
Source: After the Gold Rush
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"Southern change gonna come at last! Now your crosses are burning fast, Southern Man."
Neil Young
Source: Southern Man
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"I'm Brown, I'm Beautiful
I'm a Chicano
Y sabes que, white man, Pig, Educator
No chinges conmingo mas!!!!"
Olivia de san Diego
Source: Old Mole (1969)
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"If the button is pushed, there's no running away. There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave."
P.F. Sloan/Barry McGuire
Source: The Eve of Destruction
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"You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’. You don’t believe in war, but what's that gun you’re totin’?"
P.F. Sloan/Barry McGuire
Source: The Eve of Destruction
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"We won't get fooled again!
"
Pete Townsend
Source: Won't get fooled again!
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"A revolution is a force against which no power, divine or human, can prevail, and whose nature it is to grow by the very resistance it encounters...the more you repress it, the more you increase its rebound and render its action irresistible, so that it is precisely the same for the triumph of an idea whether it is persecuted, harassed, beaten down from the start, or whether it grows and develops unobstructed. Like the Nemesis of the ancients, whom neither
prayers nor threats could move, the revolution advances, with sombre and predestined tread, over the flowers strewn by its friends, through the blood of its defenders, over the bodies of its enemies."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
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"Mother, should I trust the government?"
Pink Floyd
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"Something just happened to the black people of the United States. We are no longer what we were a few years, a few months, a few weeks ago. Something has happened to us, not America, something which is affecting our way of thinking, our manner of fighting together. It is the most important thing that could happen in the United States. What is it? It is that fear has disappeared. Just a few weeks ago we were different. Down in the South, we were afraid; here, in the North we were afraid. It was a very primitive fear. It was the fear of dying. When the white man in the South said to us, 'Get the hell off the sidewalk, 'why did we get the hell off? Because we were afraid to die. Now we are no longer afraid. In addition, the white man has stopped talking to us in those terms: now it is he who is afraid. Now he is obliged to redefine his relationships with us.
"
Rev. Cleage
Source: Feb. 1968
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"This way of "life" is a way of death. To work for the industries of death is to murder. To know the torments Amerika inflicts on the Third World, but not to sympathize and identify, is to deny our right to love - and not to love is to die. We refuse. In death-directed Amerika there is only one way to a life of love and freedom; to attack and destroy the forces of death and exploitation and to build a just society - revolution.
"
Revolutionary Force 9
Source: March 13, 1970
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"If we are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people. We must form our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties, write our own histories."
SNCC
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"Burn, baby, burn!
"
Stokeley Carmichael
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"No matter how much money you make in the black community, when you go into the white world you are still a nigger, you are still a nigger, you are still a nigger."
Stokely Carmichael
Source: Oakland Speech (1968)
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"Beatniks and politics, nothing is new.
"
Strawberry Alarm Clock
Source: Incense and Peppermints
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"Somebody exploded an H-bomb today, but it wasn't anybody I knew."
The Moody Blues
Source: Dear Diary
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"He who wants to fight begins the end of time... Turn the earth to sand and still commit no crime!"
The Moody Blues
Source: One More Time to Live
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"Why do we never get an answer, when we're knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions, about hate and death and war. 'Cause when we stop and look around us, there is nothing that we need. In a world of persecution, that is burning in its greed."
The Moody Blues
Source: Question
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"I'm frightened for your children, that the life that we are living is in vain.
"
The Moody Blues
Source: The Story in Your Eyes
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"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
The Who
Source: Won't Get Fooled Again
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"Hippies started the ecology movement. They combated racism. They liberated sexual stereotypes, encouraged change, individual pride, and self-confidence. They questioned robot materialism. In four years they managed to stop the Vietnam War. They got marijuana decriminalized in fourteen states during the Carter Administration."
Timothy Leary
Source: Chaos and Cyberculture
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"So long, Mom
I'm off to drop the bomb
So don't wait up for me
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter
You can see me
On your TV"
Tom Lehrer
Source: So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)
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"Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
"
Tom Lehrer
Source: Pollution
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"Question Authority!
"
Unknown
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"No nukes is good nukes!
"
Unknown
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"Power to the People!
"
Unknown
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"Don't change Dick in the middle of a screw! Vote for Nixon in '72!
"
Unknown
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"To some, members of an African nationalist group who sabotage a power station in Rhodesia are "freedom fighters"; to others, they are "terrorists"."
Unknown
Source: Quote from the 1960s
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"The man who destroys commodities shows his human superiority over commodities.
"
Unknown
Source: Analysis of the 1965 Watts Riots.
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"A nation that combines the America predilection towards violence, the American stockpile of weapons and the American lack of empthy for the earth's humiliated peoples is a dangerous nation.
"
Vincent Harding
Source: Motive, April 1968
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"A Wall Street Journal sampling of opinion among black citizens in four metropolitan areas across the nation (SF, NY, Cleveland and Chicago) indicates a clear majority of blacks strongly support both the goals and methods of the Black Panthers.
"
Wall St. Journal
Source: 1/13/70
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"The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn’t going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window."
William S. Burroughs
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