Mario Savio Quotes

• There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even tacitly take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

  Mario Savio

  Running, Struggle, Heart

  Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall, delivered 2 December 1964, The University of California at Berkeley

  53 Copy quote

• Having a place in this society is far less important than creating a society in which one would want to have a place.

  Mario Savio

  Creating, Important, Want

  26 Copy quote

• I am not a political person. My involvement in the Free Speech Movement is religious and moral... I don't know what made me get up and give that first speech. I only know I had to. What was it Kierkegaard said about free acts? They're the ones that, looking back, you realize you couldn't help doing.

  Mario Savio

  Religious, Giving, Political

  "The University Has Become a Factory". Interview with Jack Fincher, Life magazine, February 26, 1965.

  13 Copy quote

• The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change America.

  Mario Savio

  America, Movement, Today

  Mario Savio, Eugene Walker, Raya Dunayevskaya (1965). “The Free Speech Movement and the Negro revolution”

  9 Copy quote

• The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today's vineyard, the military-industrial complex. They've got to be processed in the most efficient way to see to it that they have the fewest dissenting opinions, that they have just those characteristics which are wholly incompatible with being an intellectual. This is a real internal psychological contradiction. People have to suppress the very questions which reading books raises.

  Mario Savio

  Military, Real, Reading

  "The University Has Become a Factory". Interview with Jack Fincher, Life magazine, February 26, 1965.

  13 Copy quote

• I'm tired of reading about history, I want to make it.

  Mario Savio

  Reading, Tired, Want

  4 Copy quote

• You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

  Mario Savio

  Rights, Lasts, Court

  "The University Has Become a Factory". Interview with Jack Fincher, Life magazine, February 26, 1965.

  8 Copy quote

• The 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.

  Mario Savio

  Children, Growing Up, Men

  Mario Savio, Eugene Walker, Raya Dunayevskaya (1965). “The Free Speech Movement and the Negro revolution”

  10 Copy quote

• The university is well structured, well tooled, to turn out people with all the sharp edges worn off, the well-rounded person. The university is well equipped to produce that sort of person, and this means that the best among the people who enter must for four years wander aimlessly much of the time questioning why they are on campus at all, doubting whether there is any point in what they are doing, and looking toward a very bleak existence afterward in a game in which all of the rules have been made up, which one cannot really amend.

  Mario Savio

  Mean, Years, Games

  "An End To History". Humanity magazine, www.historyisaweapon.com. December 1964.

  7 Copy quote

• The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today's vineyard, the military-industrial complex.

  Mario Savio

  Military, Vineyards, Today

  "The University Has Become a Factory". Interview with Jack Fincher, Life magazine, February 26, 1965.

  7 Copy quote

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