Naomi Klein quotes

When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration? (Naomi Klein)
Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are unspeakably rich. View quote
Naomi Klein
Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear. View quote
Naomi Klein
We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other. View quote
Naomi Klein
Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. View quote
Naomi Klein
The parties with the most gain never show up on the battlefield. View quote
Naomi Klein
Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you. View quote
Naomi Klein
Everybody that's trying to get anything progressive done in this country knows that the biggest barrier is getting money out of politics. View quote
Naomi Klein
Information is shock resistance. Arm yourself. View quote
Naomi Klein
The powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on that most rarefied delicacy: impunity. View quote
Naomi Klein
The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections. (Naomi Klein)
"Like Russia's gangsterism and Bush's cronyism, contemporary Iraq is a creation of the fifty-year crusade to privatize the world. Rather than being disowned by its creators, it deserves to be seen as the purest incarnation yet of the ideology that gave it birth. View quote
Naomi Klein
Regardless of the overall state of the economy, there is now a large enough elite made up of new multi-millionaires and billionaires for Wall Street to see the group as "superconsumers," able to carry consumer demand all on their own. View quote
Naomi Klein
Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves. View quote
Naomi Klein
When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty. View quote
Naomi Klein
People without memory are putty. View quote
Naomi Klein
What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting location from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up. View quote
Naomi Klein
What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom. View quote
Naomi Klein
As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective. View quote
Naomi Klein
The theory of economic shock therapy relies in part on the roleof expectations on feeding an inflationary process. Reining in inflation requires not only changing monetary policy but also changing the behavior of consumers, employers and workers. The role of a sudden, jarring policy shift is that it quickly alters expectations, signaling to the public that the rules of the game have changed dramatically - prices will not keep rising, nor will wages. View quote
Naomi Klein
The customer is always right: 'It's my money. You have to listen to me'. (Naomi Klein)
We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer. View quote
Naomi Klein
One shouldn't gamble with what is irreplaceable and precious. View quote
Naomi Klein
Those looking for ideology in the White House should consider this: For the men who rule our world, rules are for other people. View quote
Naomi Klein
The task is clear: to create a culture of caretaking in which no one and nowhere is thrown away, in which the inherent value of people and all life is foundational. View quote
Naomi Klein