“We do not have the power or the means for a confrontation”

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 397
Context: The system absorbs those who think they can utilize it. Nor can there be any question of finding a modus vivendi or achieving attenuations. It has been demonstrated how the liberals state becomes an authoritarian state. The course is set and no accommodation will be either lasting or sufficient.
In face of this absolute power, only an absolutely negative position is viable. What we have in mind is the attitude that conscientous objectors take on a specific point, and not without good reason. In the present set-up the anarchist attitude of a total refusal of validity or legitimacy to any authority of any kind seems to me to be the only valid and viable one. The point is not to enforce a particular view of society but to establish a counterbalance, a protest, a sign of cleavage. In face of an absolute power only a total confrontation has any meaning.

Strength to Love, Chapter 7
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)

Source: Interview (4 November 1994) quoted in Backlash Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (1996), p. 51
Context: You can go to any major history and see the effect of unregulation. The very point of developing regulation around industrial society was that they were not only exploiting the workers to death they were befouling the planet, so regulation came because of that. What the right wing wants is for the public to have this role in the societal debate over balance of these issues and no power. The public power to confront these errors of industry is government regulation.

"Germany from Defeat to Conquest, 1913-1933", Władysław Wszebór Kulski - History - (1945)

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007, 2008

Broadcast (27 September 1938), quoted in The Times (28 September 1938), p. 10
Prime Minister

On bipartisanship ~ From the Houston Chronicle 1991 April 14.
1990s

Interview on Online NewsHour : &quot;George Kennan&quot; (PBS) (18 April 1996) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/kennan.html <br class="br">Context: I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn&#x27;t suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn&#x27;t think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)