Quotes from Grace Lee Boggs

I warn you, I'm a terrible housekeeper.

The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?

We have to see today in light of the transition, say, from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from agriculture to industry, and from industry to post-industry. We're in an epoch transition.

Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas.

Jimmy Boggs was born in a little town called Marion Junction, Alabama, where there were as many pigs, or more pigs, than even the people. But you know what? People in the South had an understanding that you could make a way out of no way, and that's how they survived.

Really, people are not a school of fish. Finding the leaders of the future is a question of recognizing those people who give leadership in a crisis.

Finding the leaders of the future is a question of recognizing those people who give leadership in a crisis.

You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.

Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

I think Detroit is already providing a model for change in the world. I think that Detroit - I mean, people come from all over the world come to see what we're doing. People are looking for a new way of living.

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air and it came down, it would hit an autoworker because the Chrysler Jefferson plant where my husband worked was very close also to where we lived.

I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived. And a revolution has some sense of a long time frame, millions of years that we've been evolving on this planet.

I was working with C. L. R. James; I believed in Marxist ideas about the labor and movement and the workers being the secret to the future. And I learned differently just by being in Detroit and being married to Jimmy Boggs.

Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after

I think that's a very important part of what we need in this country, is that sense that we have lived through so many stages and that we are entering into a new stage where we could create something completely different.

Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after

When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Our challenge, as we enter the new millennium, is to deepen the commonalities and the bonds between these tens of millions, while at the same time continuing to address the issues within our local communities by two-sided struggles that not only say "No" to the existing power structure but also empower our constituencies to embrace the power within each of us to crease the world anew.

Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

We are beginning to understand that the world is always being made fresh and never finished; that activism can be the journey rather than the arrival; that's struggle doesn't always have to be confrontational but can take the form of reaching out to find common ground with the many others in our society who are also seeking ways out from alienation, isolation, privatization, and dehumanization by corporate globalization.

We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.

activism can be the journey rather than the arrival;