A biography for Paul Wellstonehasn’t been written yet.
“Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.”
“We can and must move U.S. politics forward by means of committed participation.”
“Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.”
“I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.”
“What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.”
“Successful organizing is based on the recognition that people get organized because they, too, have a vision.”
“When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.”
“As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.”
“I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.”
“Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.”
“The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.”
“The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.”
“Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.”
“A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.”
“I'm short, I'm Jewish and I'm a liberal.”
“What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.”
“Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.”
“If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?”
“We all do better when we all do better.”
“Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.”