William Kunstler's Quotes

When we talk about justice in America we're really talking about justice brought about by the people, not by judges who are tools of the establishment or prosecutors who are are equally tools of the establishment or the wardens or the police officers.

A dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody. A cat really doesn't need to know that everybody loves him.

But on the other hand government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.

So May 4th in the labor movement has always been an important date.

This is New York, and there's no law against being annoying.

We have become the charnel house of the Western World.

At first blush, it seems that the young people who were shot down in the parking lot at the base of Blanket Hill gave up their lives for a dream that died with them.

But he said Blanket Hill should be a national monument. And so we came out of his chambers feeling, though while we had lost to the powers of darkness, we had at least shown one Federal Judge what the right path would have been.

Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.

May 4th is a particularly memorable day in American history because 84 years to the day before May 4, 1970, there was another demonstration at the Haymarket Square in Chicago.

On the unofficial level it was a glorious moment in our national life because young people decided that this had to stop, that they could no longer stand the shedding of blood in this tragic adventure in Southeast Asia.

Once the troops move into Cambodia, the colleges and universities of this country were on the verge of civil war. Many closed down. The students were up in arms. And it looked very much like there were going to be real problems in this country.

Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.

I'm fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They're highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.

In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.

Intellectuals who live in Hungary, or who wish to work or lecture there, are extremely circumspect in their criticism.

There's an explosion of Indian fiction of all kinds, from military thrillers to chicklit. I think that's exciting.

There's nothing New York likes more than a thing. Or a place. Or a place that's a thing. Or a thing that happens to be a place.

When I try to understand somebody, create a character, I fall into them. When I think writers are telling me what to think, I get harrumphy.

As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold.

Being in Harlem on the night of Barack Obama's election was extraordinary. It was the best street party I have ever gone to, and it felt like the period of American history which began with slavery had ended that evening.