Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Naomi Klein

Quote by Naomi Klein

“Let's stop making the same old mistakes. Here are a few, but I trust that you will silently add your own: Projecting messianic fantasies onto politicians. Thinking the market will fix it. Building a movement made up entirely of upper-middle-class white people and wondering why people of color don't want to join 'our movement.' Tearing each other to bloody shreds because it's easier to do that than go after the forces most responsible for this mess. These are social change clichés, and they are getting really boring. We don't have the right to demand perfection from each other. But we do have the right to expect progress. To demand evolution. So, let's make some new mistakes. Let's make new mistakes as we break through our silos and build the kind of beautifully diverse and justice-hungry movement that actually has a chance of winning - winning against the powerful interests that want us to keep failing.”

Quote by Naomi Klein

Work

On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and activist recognized for her work on social justice and environmental issues. Born on May 8, 1970, she has authored several influential books that have gained international acclaim. more

You May Also Like

“The values many of us take for granted today are the result of hard-fought battles that happened years, decades and centuries ago. Working alongside the civil right leaders we revere today, lik Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of now-forgotten activists who sacrificed everything they had so people today could live the way we do. Every generation needs to remember that--and to remember that it's up to us to make sacrifices of our own for the ones who will come next.”

“[A]ll of the experiments in government from below, whether during the U.S. Revolution or recently in Oaxaca, were shortlived. They would be deemed to be failures by many but the very fact that they happened at all makes them small victories. [W]e must maintain the necessary humility to work out how to make these dreams more lasting, first of all by working together and combining what is best from the anarchist and Marxist traditions. Yet it is still important to remember the victories and the people who made them.”