Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
Interpretation
Adaptability is crucial as circumstances evolve; clinging to old ideas can hinder growth.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing that reality is not static but constantly evolving. Grace Lee Boggs advocates for the necessity of adapting our thoughts and ideas to align with the changing world, warning against the dangers of being trapped in outdated beliefs, which can prevent personal and societal progress.
In practice
Use this quote when discussing innovation in a business meeting.
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.
We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?
The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.
Growing old gracefully used to begin at about 35, but today women prefer to 'stay young gratefully' with thanks to designers, beauticians and plastic surgeons.
Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer. Maybe self-destruction is the answer.
I am for lifting everyone off the social bottom. In fact, I am for doing away with the social bottom altogether.
Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.
If you walk into a room, and there is no one that's not like you there, whether it's a woman or a person of color, anyone that's different from you, you should be able to say this is a problem. We need allies in that room to say that video, this room, this company, these ideas, this film, this whatever, this is not right - this is not good enough.
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