Abbie Hoffman Quotes (43 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Woodstock Nation

Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman: 43 quotes 17 likes

Famous Abbie Hoffman Quotes

“TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 184.

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

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 187.

“All you kiddies remember to lay off the needle drugs”

Abbie Hoffman

"God Bless America — Shoot Nixon", on the spoken word album Wake Up America! (1970).
Context: All you kiddies remember to lay off the needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.

“Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 64.
Context: My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.

“We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong … and we were right! I regret nothing!”

Abbie Hoffman

Closing words from his last speech, Vanderbilt University (April 1989).
Context: 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!

“Free speech is the right to shout "Theater!" in a crowded fire.”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 214.

Abbie Hoffman Quotes about the trip

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

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 188.

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

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 184.

“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.”

Abbie Hoffman

Tikkun (July-August 1989).

“Some day we too will fly off in some communal capsule, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hippies, liberated women, young workers on the line, and G. I.'s sitting in stockades because they don't want to go to Vietnam. There will be a whole mess of us laughing and getting stoned on our way to OUTERSPACE, and the first thing we're gonna do out there is to rip down that fuckin flag on the moon.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Moonshine
Woodstock Nation (1969)

“Every group was broke cause the liberal bulge that used to support most radical causes was off on some other trip, playing around with anti-ABM campaigns and sending food to Biafra. Even though they wept and shed some blood in the streets of Chicago, they were gone for good - gone with their money. Our revolution was becoming too radical or crazy or violent or young. We were fuckin up their cocktail parties and it mattered not the blood we were shedding or the growing fascism in the country. New ways had to be found to get bread cause the days of the mailings and benefits were over. In fact, for the Yippies, they had never even begun.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

The Great Rip Off
Woodstock Nation (1969)

Abbie Hoffman Quotes

“STRUCTURE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONTENT IN THE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION.”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 109, quoting the famous statement of Marshall McLuhan.
Context: STRUCTURE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONTENT IN THE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION. It is the same as saying "the medium is the message."

“Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life.”

Abbie Hoffman

The "Steal Yourself Rich" Book (1971), p. v.
Context: 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.

Life , Learning

“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.”

Abbie Hoffman

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

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 297.
Context: 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.

“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

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 297.
Context: 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. When all today's isms have become yesterday's ancient philosophy, there will still be reactionaries and there will still be revolutionaries. No amount of rationalization can avoid the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on the planet. I still believe in the fundamental injustice of the profit system and do not accept the proposition there will be rich and poor for all eternity.

Fashion

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

Abbie Hoffman

Tikkun (July-August 1989); also quoted in The Best Liberal Quotes Ever : Why the Left is Right (2004) by William P. Martin, p. 51.

Democracy , Freedom

“The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Spoken to police immediately prior to his arrest at the Lincoln Hotel Restaurant in Chicago (August 1968), quoting himself in "Creating the Perfect Mess" (1 September 1968) in Revolution for the Hell of It (1968); also quoted in Abbie Hoffman : American Rebel (1992) by Marty Jezer.
Source: Steal This Book
Context: The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.

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

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Introduction, p. v.
Source: Steal This Book (1971)
Context: 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.

Drink

“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 book Steal This Book

Introduction, p. iv.
Source: Steal This Book (1971)

Sister , Evil

“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!”

Abbie Hoffman

"Chicago", on the spoken word album Wake Up America! (1970).

“It's ridiculous to talk about a revolution without a few words on guns. If you haven't been in the army or done some hunting, you probably have a built in fear against guns that can only be overcome by familiarizing yourself with them.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Steal This Book (1971)

Fear

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

Abbie Hoffman

Bye-Bye Sixties, Hollywood-Style, Square Dancing in the Ice Age (1982).

Nostalgia

“One tries not to be cynical; after all, they are jumping around on the fuckin moon and no matter what you think of PIG NATION, you have to admit that it dies have a good special effects department.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Moonshine
Woodstock Nation (1969)

Thinking

“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.”

Abbie Hoffman

"Reefer Madness" in The Nation (21 November 1987) http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/Nation_Hoffman_112187.html.

Education , Penalty , Madness

“LONG LIVE THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION!”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Down on Me and Janis Joplin
Woodstock Nation (1969)

“THE KEY TO ORGANIZING AN ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY IS TO ORGANIZE PEOPLE AROUND WHAT THEY CAN DO AND MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO DO.”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 135.

People

“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.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

"Free Education".
Steal This Book (1971)

Truth , Education , Time

“The Beatles may be more popular than Jesus but heavy cats like Chairman Mao, Uncle Ho, and beautiful long-haired Che Guevara are more popular than The Beatles.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Down on Me and Janis Joplin
Woodstock Nation (1969)

Beauty , Cats

“WOODSTOCK NATION is built on ELECTRICITY. It is our energy, music, politics, school, religion, play, battleground and our sensuality. I hesitate only in using the word Morality, for Morality means soul and ELECTRICITY lack soul but so too does the wood pen I scratch against the yellow pad. Morality rests in God's imagination and if we see ourselves as gods I guess we alone make those choices. Moral decisions never rest in our tools, be they electricity or pencils, flowers, or guns.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Woodstock Nation (1969)

God , School , Religion , Music

“I only regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country.”

Abbie Hoffman

Post-trial statement (modeled after a quote by American revolutionary Nathan Hale), after being declared guilty of flag desecration for wearing a shirt that resembled an American flag (1968), quoted in "The Trial of Abbie Hoffman's Shirt" in The Huffington Post (8 June 2005) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/the-trial-of-abbie-hoffma_b_2334.html.

Country

“Amerika is just another Latin dictatorship. Those who have doubts should try the minimal experience of organizing a large rock festival in their state, sleeping on some beach in the summer or wearing a flag shirt. Ask the blacks what it's been like living under racism and you'll get a taste of the future we face. As the repression increases so will the underground - deadly groups of stoned revolutionaries sneaking around at night and balling all day.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Steal This Book (1971)

Sleep , Future , Summer , Night

“I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.”

Abbie Hoffman

Cited as being in Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980) p. 222, this does not appear accessible for verification in online scans of this book. So someone needs to go to the library.
Disputed

“A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station, not the factory. It concentrates its energy on infiltrating and changing the image system.”

Abbie Hoffman

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 86

Change

“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-buinsess, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgement to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person's crime is another person's profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals an how much. I always wanted to put together an outlaw handbook that would help raise consciousness on these points while doing something about evening the score. There was also the challenge of testing the limits of free speech.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Introduction
Steal This Book (1971)

Universe , Help , Personality

“Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.”

Abbie Hoffman

This has been attributed to Hoffman by referencing The New York Times (20 April 1989), but that article (Section A, Page 16) actually says "But the Rabbi also quoted one of Mr. Hoffman's favorite sayings: 'Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.'" This statement doesn't attribute the saying to Hoffman, but only says it was a favorite and presumably he used it repeatedly.
An earlier version is "Sacred cows make great hamburgers", recorded as an anonymous saying in Encyclopedia of Graffiti (1974) by Robert George Reisner and Lorraine Wechsler.
There are earlier instances of essentially this quote. In the form "Sacred cows make the best hamburger" it appeared in October 1965 in a student newspaper at Pennsylvania State University, The Daily Collegian, saying it was borrowed from Aardvark magazine, according to the Quote Investigator blog https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/12/cows/.