Quotes about movement
page 11

Otto Lilienthal photo

“Gradual development of flight should begin with the simplest apparatus and movements, and without time complication of dynamic means.”

Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) German aviation pioneer

The Romance of Aeronautics (1912)

Jacques Ellul photo
Robert Barron (bishop) photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Tony Benn photo

“I sometimes wish the trade unionists who work in the mass media, those who are writers and broadcasters and secretaries and printers and lift operators of Thomson House would remember that they too are members of our working class movement and have a responsibility to see that what is said about us is true.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Chairman's closing address to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (6 October 1972); Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1972, p. 349
1970s

Adolf Hitler photo

“In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: ‘The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, Konrad Heiden, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1969, p. 147, first published 1944. Part of Hitler’s quote also cited in Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, A Harvest Book, 1985, footnote, p. 7
1920s

Mark Hopkins (educator) photo
Ruth Bader Ginsburg photo
John Gray photo
Jeffrey T. Kuhner photo
Joseph Massad photo
Perry Anderson photo
Gloria Allred photo

“Some say 'the women’s movement is all about older women,' but this is a movement about younger women asserting their rights that women before them fought for and won.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

December 6, 2014, Gloria Allred: The Battle Over Sexual Assault is the ‘Civil Rights Movement of Our Time’, May 15, 2014, Time magazine, Gloria Allred http://time.com/100055/campus-sexual-assault-gloria-allred/,

Wangari Maathai photo
Kóbó Abe photo
Mahdi Akef photo

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview - the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.”

Mahdi Akef (1928–2017) Egyptian Islamist

The Progress of Hassan al-Banna's Vision http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/11/the_progress_of_hassan_albanna.html (November 2006)

John Dewey photo
Franz von Papen photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
David Korten photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“As a red hot Communist I am in favour of fascism. The only drawback to Sir Oswald’s movement is that it is not quite British enough.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

As quoted in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993). Originally from Bernard Shaw, The News Chronicle, “The Blackshirt Challenge,” (Jan. 1934)
1930s

Subcomandante Marcos photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Henry James Sumner Maine photo

“The movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.”

Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) British comparative jurist and historian

‘Ancient Law’ (1861) ch. 5.

Joey Comeau photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied upon in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do not misunderstand my railing—do not class me with those who despise religion—do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity—which cometh from above—which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves.
By all the love I bear such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and the Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem to worship and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion which can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from the heathen on this side—which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here…. I love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them. I hope to see a revival of it—thank God it is revived. I see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the old sort of way, in the last five years.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

As quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (2009), by Maurice S. Lee, Cambridge University Press, pp. 68-69

Yurii Andrukhovych photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

Léon Theremin photo

“I wanted to invent some kind of an instrument that would not operate mechanically, as does the piano, or the cello and the violin, whose bow movements can be compared to those of a saw. I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra.”

Léon Theremin (1896–1993) Russian inventor

Source: An Interview with Leon Theremin http://www.oddmusic.com/theremin/theremin_interview_1.html / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France 16 June 1989.

Ken Ham photo
Johannes Bosboom photo

“The romantic [Dutch] movement under the leadership of the geniuses Nuyen [c. 1830] also attracted me to follow. And in spite of the fact that in this way people lost their color and embellishment and often degenerating into chic, later on, a more sensible search arose for enlivening of coloration, heightening effect and strengthening the relief.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in Nederlands): De romantische beweging onder aanvoering van den genialen nl:Wijnand Nuijen trok ook mij aan tot volgen. En al verviel men langs dien weg in gekleurdheid en opgesmuktheid, vaak ontaardend in chic; er ontsproot daaruit later een meer verstandig zoeken naar verlevendiging van coloriet, verhooging van effect, vermeerdering van reliëf.
Quote from Bosboom's small autobiography, 1891; as cited in De Hollandsche Schilderkunst in de Negentiende Eeuw, G. H. Marius; https://ia800204.us.archive.org/31/items/dehollandschesch00mariuoft/dehollandschesch00mariuoft.pdf Martinus Nijhoff, s-'Gravenhage / The Hague, tweede druk, 1920, pp. 74-75 (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1890's

Michel De Montaigne photo

“It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.”

C'est une épineuse entreprise, et plus qu'il ne semble, de suivre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nôtre esprit; de pénétrer les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrêter tant de menus de ses agitations.
Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor photo
Amir Taheri photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“If Gandhi tries to start a really hostile movement against us in this crisis, I am of the opinion that he should be arrested, and that both British and United States opinion would support such a step. If he likes to starve himself to death, we cannot help that.”

Minute (14 June 1942) to the Secretary of State for India before Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 123
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Paul Klee photo
Samuel Gompers photo
Natan Sharansky photo

“The State of Israel is a national home for the entire Jewish people and it is clear to me that there is no dispute between any party or Zionist movement, while the nation-state law was originally intended to reinforce this principle, the most recent amendments to it are of great concern because they drive a wedge between Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora.”

Natan Sharansky (1948) Israeli politician

In a letter to Amir Ohan about the Clause 7B of the Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, as quoted in Sharansky: Jewish state bill will ‘drive a wedge’ between Israel and Diaspora https://www.timesofisrael.com/sharansky-jewish-state-bill-will-drive-a-wedge-between-israel-and-diaspora/ (11 July 2018) by Raoul Wootliff, The Times of Israel.

Warren Farrell photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Manuel Castells photo

“The anti-globalization movement is not simply a network, it is an electronic network, it is an Internet-based movement. And because the Internet is its home it cannot be disorganized or captured. It swims like fish in the net”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 5, Computer Networks and Civil Society, p. 142

Charles Baudelaire photo

“I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.”

<p>Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.</p><p>Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.</p>
"La Beauté" [Beauty] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Beaut%C3%A9_%28Les_Fleurs_du_mal%29
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Ture Nerman photo

“Struggle is life, and a movement, that no longer wants to fight, is beaten.”

Ture Nerman (1886–1969) Swedish socialist

Socialist newspaper Nya Samhället (24 September 1913)
Sourced quotes

Alan Moore photo

“The more I look at most of the art movements, it’s all occultism, when you get down to it. The Surrealists were openly talking about being magicians.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Peter F. Drucker photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Emanuel Moravec photo
Pat Robertson photo

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992); it is sometimes claimed that this statement appeared in Robertson's 1992 GOP convention speech, but this is not the case (see also transcript http://www.patrobertson.com/Speeches/1992GOPConvention.asp)

Guy Debord photo
Stafford Cripps photo

“The reactionaries of our Movement are keen to prevent Socialists from coming into it. The last thing anyone should do is to pander to the reactionaries by staying out. James Maxton and Harry Pollitt should be the Leaders of the Labour Movement today”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

The Manchester Guardian (15 February 1937), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151

Douglas Coupland photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Camille Paglia photo
T. E. Lawrence photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Paul Kingsnorth photo
E. W. Hobson photo

“Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), pp. 285-286; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 229): Mathematics and Science.

Peter Gabriel photo

“The time I like is the rush hour, cos I like the rush
The pushing of the people — I like it all so much
Such a mass of motion — do not know where it goes
I move with the movement and… I have the touch.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

I Have The Touch
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (IV), Security (1982)

Robert Delaunay photo

“Light in nature creates movement in color. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of colors contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality [In this quote Delaunay is referring to his series 'Window'-paintings', which he had started in 1912].”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in: 'Nous irons jusqu'au soleil', Delaunay; as cited in 'Futurism', ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 217
1915 - 1941

Barbara Hepworth photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Tariq Ali v. Christopher Hitchens: A Debate on the U.S. War on Iraq, the Bush-Kerry Race and the Neo-Conservative Movement" http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/12/1347208&mode=thread&tid=25, Democracy Now (2004-10-12).
2000s, 2004

Arthur Koestler photo
Kent Hovind photo

“The New Age movement is nothing more than the old rebellion against God and the belief in evolution, with a little Hindu and Buddhist religion mixed in with it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Eric Hoffer photo

“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action.”

The True Believer (1951), Part Four: Beginning and End

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan photo

“If we in this movement are going to ask the decent, silent majority of Muslim men - and women - to have the courage to face down the extremist bullies, then we need to have the courage and character to stand shoulder to shoulder with them doing it.”

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan (1947) British politician

Speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, 28 September 2006. BBC News 28 September 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5388112.stm

Osvaldo Pugliese photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“I want to defend fracking under the right circumstances… I want to defend this stuff. And you know, I'm already at odds with the most organized and wildest [of the environmental movement]. They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, 'Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

No. I won't promise that. Get a life, you know.
Private meeting with the Building Trades Union (9 September 2015), WikiLeaks. Quoted in "Clinton to environmentalists: 'Get a life'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-to-environmentalists-get-a-life/article/2604626 by John Siciliano, Washington Examiner (15 October 2016).
Attributed

M.I.A. photo
Valentino Braitenberg photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens. Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders. The formation of these new parties began in the fifth century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand. The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family, in the funeral procession.. the honouring of images was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden amulet-case of the boys--trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so strictly adhered to, and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses upon his head.(6) These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only acquired political importance in consequence of the change of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Jacques Derrida photo
Angela Davis photo
Richard Overy photo

“During the years that followed, Hitler and the Nazi movement were anything but the tools of German big business.”

Richard Overy (1947) British historian

Source: War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994), p. 12

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo
Warren Farrell photo
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw photo
Kurt Schuschnigg photo