So, for years I've had quotes up in my classroom for decoration. Some are political and some aren't. This year, I need a new one, because I learned Hannah Arendt was a huge racist.
The ideal quote should be implicitly leftist, but not explicitly.
For example I currently have: "Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs
" Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass
So the sort of thing a liberal would glance at and think yeah that sounds good, but is actually based. No Mao or Lenin or anyone like that that will set off the brainworms. Thoughts?
Howard Zinn! I perused his quotes page on goodreads, and here are some examples, but there are so many to choose from. Some of these are excerpts from his play about Marx but you wouldn't have to include that bit of info
“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”
“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.”
“The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change.”
“You can't be neutral on a moving train.”
“But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.”
“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.”
“Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.”
This would be the one.