Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Erik Olin Wright

Quote by Erik Olin Wright

Work

Class, Crisis and the State

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Erik Olin Wright

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Erik Olin Wright. more

You May Also Like

“I was tempted to tell my father the truth, but perhaps it was better to let him go on believing Vincent was depraved, a pervert of some kind, a child abuser. If Dad believed he’d invited a creature from myth and legend to cross his threshold, he’d have to rethink his entire concept of reality. I wasn’t sure he was ready for that.”

“I could trick him into taking me for a ride,” I said. “You could follow us in your truck. Then you could—” “No,” Will said sharply. “You’d go over the cliff with him, Cynda.” “I’d jump out before it went over the edge,” I said quickly. “Like people do in movies.” How actors did things like that I had no idea, but it didn’t matter. If I had to die to destroy Vincent, I would. Anything—even death—would be better than being his forever.”

“I was tempted to tell my father the truth, but perhaps it was better to let him go on believing that Vincent was depraved, a pervert of some kind, a child abuser. If Dad believed he’d invited a creature from myth and legend to cross his threshold, he’d have to rethink his entire concept of reality. I wasn’t sure he was ready for that.”

“An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why "criminals" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category "lawbreakers" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another.”

“I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And the only way we can do this is by moving toward a revolutionary society where the needs and wishes of all people can be respected.' With these words the radical philosophy professor Angela Davis paraphrases Isaiah's ancient messianic dream of the lion that will peacefully lie down with the lamb in a completely good world. But what the Biblical prophet perhaps could not know is contained with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired in the opening sentence of an address of the French Senate to Napoleon I: "Sire, the desire for perfection is one of the worst maladies that can affect the human mind.”