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Most social decisions distribute benefits and costs unequally. However, most people are often willing to accept a decision that gives them less now, if it promises them more later. That guarantee is no longer plausible when growth ends. Then life becomes viewed as a zero-sum activity, and compromise becomes impossible. Without compromise, the adaptive mechanisms of a democratic society become gridlocked, and crisis inevitably mounts. An immutable lesson of history is that when a people think they must choose between order and liberty, they will always prefer order. Hence the drift toward authoritarianism.

— Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows (Page xi)

It is a positive feedback loop. Wealth gives power. Power gives the ability to warp the economic and political system in ways that permit even more concentration of wealth. Hence the drift toward inequality.

— Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows (Page xi)

Most white southerners believed in the 1950s that they lived in a humane racial system; their myth was that they treated black people well. They also believed that black people accepted segregation, except for a few malcontents. It was shocking for them to see nicely dressed black college students reading their textbooks while sitting at a lunch counter waiting for coffee, when they could get takeout coffee at the back door. Doubly shocking to see white men beating them up. Two secrets were exposed at once: black people want freedom, and segregation requires violence. Millions of slogans on picket signs could not do what a simple sit-in could do. Campaigns have power when we get beyond words-when we show rather than tell.

— How We Win by George Lakey (Page 96 - 97)

TRUE! – Nervous–very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses–not destroyed–not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad ? Hearken! and observe how healthily–how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

— The tell-tale heart by Edgar Allan Poe (Creative short stories)

And then the stole into my fancy, rich like a musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervéned; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.

— The pit and the pendulum and other stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin 60s)

One social change role is direct service, or helper: the people who addess a social problem in a very direct way. Examples are Habitat for Humanity volunteers who build houses and envionmentalists who clean up streams. Another change role is the advocate, who seeks a better policy from those in authority: lawyers who represent immigrants threatened with expulsion, lobbyists who seek additional funding for schools in low-income areas. The change role of organizer takes on many tasks having to do wìth getting people together, whether to create a new campaign or to turn out tens of thousands to an action or to hold a fundraising event with a celebrity. The role of rebel focuses on disruption: Susan B. Anthony voting illegally in the 1876 presidential election, Martin Luther King Jr. refusing President Lyndon B. Johnson's order to stop the Selma March for voting rights, César Chávez leading the California farmworkers in their strike against growers and wine makers. When we start a nonviolent direct action campaign, it is usually rebels who most of all report for duty.

— How We Win by George Lakey (Page 11)

I know of no country that has undergone major change through one-off protests. Opponents realize that no matter how many people participate in sporadic protests, participants will go home again. Winning major demands requires staying power and, as this guide will share, much else besides. A CAMPAIGN HAS SPECIFIC DEMANDS AND A TARGET

— How We Win by George Lakey (Page 6)

One thing is easier now: creating instant mass protests. Social media's ability to increase our power to mobilize is so dramatic that it can cause us to forget that mobilizing is not the same as organizing. Also, that one-off protests, however large, are nowhere near as powerful as sustained campaigns.

— How We Win by George Lakey (Page xi)