“The world cannot be changed through the state. Both theoretical reflection and a whole century of bad experience tell us so.”

—  John Holloway , book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The world cannot be changed through the state. Both theoretical reflection and a whole century of bad experience tell u…" by John Holloway?
John Holloway photo
John Holloway 20
Mexican sociologist 1947

Related quotes

Rollo May photo

“When we "fall" in love, as the expressive verb puts it, the world shakes and changes around us, not only in the way it looks but in our whole experience of what we are doing in the world.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), p. 100
Context: When we "fall" in love, as the expressive verb puts it, the world shakes and changes around us, not only in the way it looks but in our whole experience of what we are doing in the world. Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects … Love is the answer, we sing. … our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic — albeit desperate — conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.

David Lynch photo

“It's not just words or music — it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film.”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

Cinema, p. 17
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: I'm not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you've got time and sequences. You've got dialogue. You've got music. You've got sound effects. You have so many tools. And so you can express a feeling and a thought that can't be conveyed any other way. It's a magical medium.
For me, it's so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. It's not just words or music — it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film.

Michael Jackson photo

“And the whole world has to answer right now,
Just to tell you once again,
'Who's bad!”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Bad
Bad (1987)

Ronald David Laing photo

“I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.”

Ronald David Laing book The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence
Context: I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience used to be called The Soul. Experience as invisibility of man to man is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence. Psychology is the logos of experience. Psychology is the structure of the evidence, and hence psychology is the science of sciences.

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“The whole history of lamentation, and mourning, and woe, from the beginning of the world—the funeral ceremonies in which the living symbolize the intensity of their grief—the monuments they rear to tell the world for centuries to come of the calamity they have suffered from the stroke of death—are enduring attestations that it is not so much in the removal of one sentient and living being off the earth, as in the change—the calamitous change to the survivors—that death is truly the King of Terrors.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 13

Michael Franti photo

“A lot of times we look at the whole world and think, 'it's so daunting, how can we change the whole world?' and you don't need to do that, what you need to do is change your world a little bit, and see if you can, through example, inspire others to do the same thing.”

Michael Franti (1966) American rapper

Michael Franti Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s75CPceiCw&feature=related

“I bet if you go through the rest of your life telling yourself, "I'm sparkling," you'll have a whole different energy and experience.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

James Baldwin photo

“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States
Simone Weil photo

“Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated. … The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“The teaching of mathematics,” p. 71-72
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)
Context: My purpose here is to denounce an idea which seems to be dangerous and false. … Revolutionary trade unionists and orthodox communists are at one in considering everything that is purely theoretical as bourgeois. … The culture of a socialist society would be a synthesis of theory and practice; but to synthesize is not the same as to confuse together; it is only contraries that can be synthesized. … Marx’s principal glory is to have rescued the study of societies not only from Utopianism but also and at the same time from empiricism. … Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated. … The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism.

Arthur Stanley Eddington photo

“If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine … but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Related topics