Political Quotes

[Pathless]

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

--Stephen Biko

[Pathless]

"It occurs to me that governments are instituted among men to keep them apart. And so is capitalism. And its fodder, money. And so are 'nuclear' families--highly mobile, of course. And so is progress, the touchstone of corporationism, of the nation, and of every American's life. It occurs to me that the 'melting pot' never worked because it was not intended to work and that schools and other institutions are designed to teach and reinforce the principle that group experiences are painful, anti-human, demoralizing.... Loneliness, the beloved American Hero, is a coiling clinging snake. It is strangling the life out of the people, the families around us, killed by the murderous creations of our own minds. Yet it is seductive, hypnotic in its murderous intent, because however fiercely loved, solitude is not really possible, in this world after all."

--Paula Gunn Allen, from "The Savages in the Mirror," in Off the Reservation

[Pathless]

"Because Western societies are fundamentally the same--they all arise from the same essential culture base--Eurocentric critics think that culture is a unified field. French, English, German, Italian, Swiss, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, and Spanish worldviews are, at their deepest levels, part of the same cultural matrix: they all have the same mother, and that they are governed by members of the same extended family is but one mark of this profound sameness. But though these 'cultures' are much alike, others are not of the same configuration, springing in no way from a similar root."

--Paula Gunn Allen, from "Thus Spake Pocahontas," in Off the Reservation