Top 15 Margaret Randall Quotes

What I want out of life, is to contribute as much as possible to make a better world.

It is very important not to be overly romantic about revolution...There is a tendency in capitalistic countries to think of revolution as a schematic thing, forgetting that revolutions are made by people and that there are a lot of contradictions. Well, there are a lot of problems here, underdevelopment, housing, education. The exciting thing is to see them make mistakes and try again. I love it so much more for being able to criticize it and see it for what it is. I love it so much I don't want people to be romantic about it.

I had to learn to fit my desire to be successful, well known, famous, and my desire to get my message across, how to fit this into service of the revolution without that meaning that I was just writing pamphlets...It was a struggle to maintain my integrity. And it was a very intense experience. What does it mean to write for The People?...I feel one must take sides in a struggle. What is that terrible phrase in the bourgeois language, 'I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' Well, I hate that. One has values in life and they are what they are.

I was completely captivated by seeing a new revolution. I had read Marx and Lenin but I was heavily impressed by the human aspect of seeing people with dignity.

One of the things that has happened to me out of experience and out of revolutionary practice is coming to the conclusion that people are human beings.People are good and bad everywhere. Five years ago I was a much more schematic person. In that sense I've changed a lot.

I deeply believe in the importance of language, that we must retrieve ways to say what we mean, assign responsibility, give the perpetrators as well as the victims and survivors first and last names. We must teach ourselves how to use language powerfully; only then will its reclaimed and highly charged memory enable us to create ourselves into the world of equality and justice we so urgently need. I'm not talking about vision without work. Bumper stickers like "VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE" annoy me. It's not enough to see with the eye-even the mind's eye.

We must reclaim our voices in order to create the women (indeed, the people) we must be: no more conditioned dichotomy between emotions, mind, and body; no further need for the fragmented or reactive response.

More than a decade ago, in the introduction to another book, I said that socialism and feminism need one another. Now I would add that we must work hard, individually and collectively, to reunite body and mind-and learn about the ways in which they work together-for the health of our planet, our society, ourselves. Through these years which have proven so difficult and discouraging for the socialist dream I continue to nurture, this seems more than ever important.

Walking to the edge is what I've done most of my life. Walking to the edge: taking conscious risk. Calling up, even in the most difficult of circumstances, this courage of vulnerability. Honoring process, a profoundly female business. So engaged, I have often felt painfully alone. Then, in instant recognition and warmed by its consequent explosion of tenderness and life, there is the presence of that millennia of sisters. Sisters, as well, in the here and now. And yes, also brothers. If I have learned little else, I have learned that I have no choice but to walk again and again to the edge. Because there is no choice, and because there are so many of us walking out here, I am not alone. There is challenge and also a steadiness in our discovery.

The McCarran-Walter clause under which I was charged was popularly referred to as “the ideological exclusion” clause. My deportation order stated that my work was found to be “against the good order and happiness of the United States.”

revolutionary–as I understand that word. That is to say, more inclusive, more outspoken, more creative, more of a reflection of what we all hope the new man and new woman will be.

I experienced Cuban society as exhilarating, exciting, and amazing. I loved being part of a project that was making itself from the inside out. I felt privileged to be living in a place where real equality seemed to be the collective goal. I thrilled to meetings in which drafts of new law were discussed, and my neighbors or colleagues and I could have input into those laws. I also felt privileged, especially as a mother, to live in a society that saw health and education as basic human rights, and that was developing an outstanding system of universal health care that freed me from worry when my children were ill.

all in all, I think we revolutionaries of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s gave our children love and a sterling set of values.

my mothering was circumscribed in two ways: as a revolutionary involved in trying to make the world a better place for all children, and as a feminist who demanded from my partner equal involvement in household tasks, and wanted to imbue my children with those values as well–my son as well as my daughters.

I discovered feminism in Mexico, at the end of my time there, when the first articles from US and European feminists began to appear...Feminism wasn’t academic theory to me, but something to be lived. I needed it.