Latest Rebecca Solnit Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• People are actually very good at being communists in the sense that they instantly abandon capitalism, that they love these relationships of mutual aid, because the astonishing thing about disasters is that people are often weirdly joyous in them, because they've recovered a sense of agency, a sense of power, etc.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Agency, People, Etc

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I feel like we're in a truly revolutionary period, not just in terms of practical activities to overthrow regimes in the Middle East or Occupy but also in terms of radical redefinitions. I feel like workers are a big part of it, but there's so much more going on.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Middle East, Revolutionary, Regimes

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Everyday life is a disaster, and disaster can liberate us.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Everyday, Life Is, Everyday Life

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• That's what I'm trying to get over: the idea that anarchism offers a description of equitable relations that go way back rather than a hypothesis of what the future should look like.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Ideas, Trying, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• There was an assumption that aerial bombing of civilians in World War II would cause fragile, working-class people to basically have nervous breakdowns and it would paralyze the state. That was the logic of aerial bombing. In fact, it doesn't happen at all, but the logic behind aerial bombing has never stopped, even though it never demoralizes, terrorizes, or paralyzes a population.

  Rebecca Solnit

  War, Class, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• If you look at a lot of traditional societies, they're all organized along what we might call anarchist guidelines, but it's not like the Zapatistas were reading European social theory.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Reading, Looks, Might

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I am against resources being controlled by corporations, but that doesn't mean I want them controlled by the state.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Mean, Want, Corporations

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The oil corporations spend a lot of money to get, say, the tar sands pipeline through, but nobody's - you know, there are definitely environmentalists being paid - but a lot of people are acting for something other than financial compensation. So if the tar sands pipeline doesn't get made, it's because a huge amount of people are doing something that doesn't involve remuneration, money, etc., because we're not actually the self-interested financial instruments that economists like to imagine we are.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Oil, Self, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I often think that the reason capitalism hasn't completely destroyed everything is that a huge amount of anti-capitalist endeavor goes on, from labors of love, nurture, friendship, and barter to gift economies and different kinds of exchanges, not just one alternate model but a whole host of other ways in which we engage with each other and with the world that aren't financial and debt-based.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Thinking, Debt, Goes On

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It turns out that we're actually capable of something other than neoliberalism and actually we're really capable of enjoying ourselves more than we do under neoliberalism. It feels that if neoliberalism is first about privatizing desire and imagination before the economy, then we're in this process of publicizing it again.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Imagination, Desire, Neoliberalism

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• What is kind of beautiful about Katrina is that even though the media and officials are working hard at telling us everyone in New Orleans was a monster, in the immediate aftermath more than 200,000 people invite displaced strangers into their homes through hurricanehousing.org and an uncounted horde go to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to give, to love, to be in solidarity, and to rebuild.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Beautiful, Home, New Orleans

  Source: therumpus.net

• Growing up north of San Francisco, I immersed myself in the local landscape and in books about Native Americans, cowboys, and pioneers that seemed to ground me in it, but to pursue culture in those days meant being spun around until dizzy and then pushed east.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Growing Up, Book, Native American

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Writing, Technology, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

• Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Believe, People, Creative

  Source: therumpus.net

• I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Understanding, Territory, Ends

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.

  Rebecca Solnit

  People, Ordinary, Influence

  Source: therumpus.net

• The power of large corporations is still a scourge on the earth, but at least the arguments supporting them are undermined now.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Earth, Corporations, Argument

  Source: therumpus.net

• A contrarian at heart, I am often guided by what I disagree with and don't want.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Heart, Want, Disagree

  Source: therumpus.net

• The poor have often been subversive just because they don't always believe their own depiction as brutes and loafers and leeches, and new economy is making lots more poor or recognize their fellowship with the insecurity of the poor, the portion of the population for whom the system does not work.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Believe, Insecurity, Leeches

  Source: therumpus.net

• While a lot of people want to join the left to react against the mainstream or right, I in many ways react against the left - not a lot of its fundamental commitments, but its often dismal tone, righteousness, defeatism, etc.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Commitment, People, Fundamentals

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Latin, America, Political

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Thinking, Media, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's all about a war of social impulses and beliefs that is as powerful in its way as a big hurricane.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Powerful, War, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

• For me the insurrectionary possibilities of disaster are what make them really interesting and sometimes positive - Mexico City's big 1985 earthquake brought a lot of positive, populist, anti-institutional social change.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Earthquakes, Cities, Interesting

  Source: therumpus.net

• In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.

  Rebecca Solnit

  People, Giving, Profound

  Source: therumpus.net