Abbie Hoffman
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.
I want to be tried not because I support the National Liberation Front -which I do -but because I have long hair. Not because I support the Black Liberation Movement, but because I smoke dope. Not because I am against a capitalist system, but because I think property eats shit. Not because I believe in student power, but that the schools should be destroyed. Not because I'm against corporate liberalism, but because I think people should do whatever the fuck they want, and not because I am trying to organize the working class, but because I think kids should kill parents. Finally, I want to be tried for having a good time and not being serious.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
Fantasy is the only truth.
I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
There is no such thing as an innocent bystander.
When decorum is repression, the only dignity free people have is to speak out.
Morality seems to enter the picture only when individuals interact with each other. It's universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get beyond the one-to-one level and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide who exactly is stealing from whom. One person's crime is another person's profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much.
Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
All the isms lead to schisms which lead to wasms.
In the late sixties we were so fed up we wanted to destroy it all. That's when we changed the name of America and stuck in the "k." The mood today is different, and the language that will respond to today's mood will be different. Things are so deteriorated in this society, that it's not up to you to destroy America, it's up to you to go out and save America. The same impulse that helped us fight our way out of one empire 200 years ago must help us get free of the Holy Financial Empire today. The transnationals – with their money in Switzerland, headquarters in Luxembourg, ships in tax-free Panama, natural resources all over the emerging world, and their sleepy consumers in the United States – do not have the interest of the United States at heart. Ronald Reagan and the CIA are traitors to America, they have sold it to the Holy Financial Empire. The enemy is out there, he s not in this room. People are allowed to have different visions and different views, but you have to have unity.
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