Vijay Prashad Quotes

Leadership is another word for preparation.

I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.

The best intentions (of respect and tolerance) can often be annoying to those whose cultures are not in dominance: we feel that we are often zoological specimens.

Where there is a living memory of struggle, they have a living memory of the rebellion. Where there's no struggle afterward the rebellion is forgotten.

I don't recall an American president basically coming out and criticizing the Israeli public.

To build a mass movement, nonviolence is indispensable.

It's Israelis who are ready to abandon the hard work of peace.

There's a right-wing shift in Israeli society, very hard right shift.

There's a different use for different strategies.

You see all kinds of anarchic forms of rebellion, but the moment of preparation is when the Communists and other kinds of political forces play a roll.

People who become important activists, they also struggle with the process of discovery.

There are cultures that produce different kinds of attitudes, whether it's religion, fatalism, sense of fear, repression, the culture of God and the police minimizes confidence in people.

The question of international norms or international resolutions, you know, coming from Mr. Obama is not really about whether there are international norms or resolutions to uphold.

It's important to reflect about what's happening inside Israel.

Turkey is using the Islamic State in the same way as Pakistan used the Taliban in Afghanistan. You know, that's perhaps Turkey's strategy.

However you define territorial ambitions, it need not be a country that's right next to the U.S. for it to exercise its extraterritorial or territorial ambitions.

All evidence suggests that Turkey has allowed ISIS fighters, when they've been injured, to return into Turkey and to get treated in Turkey's hospitals.

The Chinese did after all decide that the Soviet Union was a greater threat than the United States and decided to come to terms with the United States when Nixon visits China.

From 1991 till the present, Iraq sovereignty has been trampled by the United States.

We come from the future, essentially, because we have all these ideas about gender equality, sexual freedom, and these are not shared by the working class, the peasantry among whom we work.

Organizing is always a relationship between the person who arrives and says 'Let's meet together' and the person who comes to the meeting.

The United States is facing serious pushback from Turkey, which is not comfortable with the view that the Islamic State is a terrorist organization.

When you are threatened, when your life is threatened, you have to fight back.

Where there is no history of struggle after an uprising, the living memory dies.

You see often it's not ideas, it's inertia, it's bureaucratism, it's all the other things that sometimes come in the way of a good idea.

You cannot have politics without building mass-movements.

I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.

To be a Communist or to be somebody who believes in the future is a curious thing. So you have to live with people around you, you have to be with the people.