Read & Riot Quotes

“We need a miracle to get out of here. And miracles are real; they have happened to me before. Unconditional love, for example, or solidarity, or courageous collective action. Miracles always happen at the right moment in the lives of those with a childlike faith in the triumph of truth over falsehood, of those who believe in mutual aid and live in keeping with the gift economy. You cannot buy the revolution, you can only be the revolution.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Quando nos faltam forças para agir, é preciso encontrar palavras que nos inspirem. Por isso, lembre-se de um ponto fundamental: nada de deixar sua confiança arrefecer. O poder está nas suas mãos. Juntos, como comunidade ou como movimento, podemos fazer milagres. E faremos.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Um Guia Pussy Riot Para o Ativismo

“We don't want to be passive squares, boring phonies, or conformists seduced by comfort trapped in a repetitive, endless ritual of consuming, who keep buying shit that's thrown at us as a bone, who forget how to ask honest and important questions, who are just trying to make it through the day.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“The current systems have failed to provide answers for citizens, and people are looking outside of the mainstream political spectrum. These dissatisfactions are now being used by right-wing, nativist, opportunist, corrupted, cynical political players. The same ones who helped create and stoke all of this now offer salvation. That's their game. It's the same strategy as defunding a program or regulatory agency they want to get rid of, then holding up its resulting ineffectiveness as evidence that it needs to be folded.

If nationalist aggression, closed borders, exceptionalism of any kind really worked for society, North Korea would be the most prosperous country on earth. They have never really worked, but we keep buying it. That's how we got Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, Orban, etc. In Russia, President Putin is playing these games too: he exploits the complex of rage, pain, impoverishment of the Russian people caused by the shock economy and the Machiavellian privatization and deregulation that took place in the 1990s.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“If you want to change something, you need to know how things work. An activist should know this. You’re learning about how things work by practicing them.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“I want to intensify my life. I want to reach maximum density, live nine lives in one. It’s a search for lives, not experiences”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“What was in fact blown up on the 8th of November 2016 was the social contract, the paradigm that says you can live comfortably without getting your hands dirty with politics. The belief that it only takes your one vote every four years (or no vote at all: you’re above politics) to have your freedoms protected. This belief was torn to pieces. The belief that institutions are here to protect us and take care of us, and we don’t need to bother ourselves with protecting these institutions from being eroded by corruption, lobbyists, monopolies, corporate and government control over our personal data.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Why are so many people not feeling quite well? And why is the goal of treatment to conform patients to the norm rather than to deal with the systemic issues that make millions of people feel miserable? What is certain socioeconomic trends are leading to this explosion of illnesses? When competition and gaining success by any means have become our ideology, should we really be surprised by this overwhelming feeling of hopeless isolation? Competitive solidarity does not exist; competitive love does not exist either.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and to fight for that dream.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Art is a realm that helps us fight forces which try to mechanize people, forces which see humans as things that need user instructions and should be placed on the shelf of a store in a shopping mall.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Look for the truth that explodes existing boundaries and definitions. Follow your instincts and you'll get a chance to break prevailing rules so beautifully you may even end up establishing a new norm, a new paradigm. Nothing frozen is perfect.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Being a punk is about constantly surprising... Being a punk means systematically changing the image of yourself, being elusive, sabotaging cultural and political codes...Undermine, transform, exceed expectations. That's what punk means to me.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Labeling those who think differently as mentally ill, force-feeding them meds, and locking them up in hospitals are part of a mighty instrument of control. As a matter of fact, it's the most dangerous form of control - one that appears to come with the approval of science.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“We never developed the language to discuss the well-being of the earth as a whole system”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“I was born a few days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. One might have thought at the time that after the assumed elimination of the Cold War paradigm, we were going to live in peace. Hmm . . . what we’ve seen, in fact, is a cosmic rise in inequality, the global empowerment of oligarchs, threats to public education and health care, plus a potentially fatal environmental crisis.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“If nationalist aggression, closed borders, exceptionalism of any kind really worked for society, North Korea would be the most prosperous country on earth.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“How can we break through the alienation of social existence, inauthenticity, and the treatment of a human being as a thing among things?”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“I’m going to study philosophy.” “Why?” “Because philosophy makes me happy?”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Nothing will change if we prefer to sit around and complain that politics is boring and because it is boring we don’t want to take part in it. It’s up to us to reshape what politics is. Take it back. Bring it back to the streets, clubs, bars, parks. Our party isn’t over.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Bernie Sanders writes in Our Revolution about an experience he had in South Carolina. He was talking with a young black man who was working at McDonald’s: “He informed me that, to him and his friends, politics was totally irrelevant to their lives. It was not something they cared about or even talked about.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Where am I from? I'm from the most polluted city on the planet. I'm from the Milky Way. I'm from Russian literature and Japanese theater. I'm from every city where I fought or fucked. I'm from jail and I'm from the White House. I'm from punk records and from Bach's compositions, from my obsession with turquoise, coffee, and loud music.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“There are cultures of eating, film viewing, and book reading, and there is the culture of revolt, the ability to pose awkward questions, cast doubt on things, and change them. Feed the latter. Even the best, most perfect president will serve you fuck-all on a silver platter. It's self-service in these parts.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“If the theory of superstrings is right and we all consist of strings that vibrate, it explains why music can touch us so deeply. Because we do not consist of solid things, as we used to think. If we are just strings of energy—and quantum physics says that we are—we would resonate. If you could feel it, you could project ideas and feelings and perceptions of reality. Music is a prayer.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism