A biography for Todd Gitlinhasn’t been written yet.
“It's an old anarchist dream that people can take care of their own lives.”
“Some fine day, Democrats may figure out how to get on the right side of the value divide - how to define America as a place of the common good and not a playground of the strong.”
“Today's global justice movement may be the biggest, most diverse and energetic in history.”
“I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more, and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties.”
“The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism.”
“Some versions of patriotism come close to the tribal, which we all want to surpass, and some don't.”
“We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery.”
“So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.”
“American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.”
“Like Americans, people outside America want fun, want an emotional compensation for the utilitarianism and calculation that mark the rest of their lives.”
“There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.”
“My position is not that John Kerry is either Jesus Christ or the prophet Mohammad. My position is that John Kerry is the possibility of restarting politics.”
“My business is the analytical framework.”
“The moguls are driven by their respective desires for profit - period.”
“As I write at the end, if we step back and face the enormity of the torrent, then we have taken the first step to imagining what we might want to do about it.”