Skip to content

The more successfully we learn and practice the gospel of plasticity, the less suitable we become as subjects of the necessitarian styles of social and historical analysis that the great social theorists have taught us. We can, in fact, raise a storm in the world and still understand and explain ourselves. All we need is a better approach.

— Roberto Mangabeira Unger Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987)

Another quote →

More quotes by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

The partnership between the progressive school and the deepened democracy may help to nourish the childlike intensity of ordinary people as they grow older.

Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998)

In history obedience rarely pays; what pays is defiance.

The Left Alternative (2009)

Philosophy is a concentrated deployment of the transgressing facilities of the mind.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

We can, we must, jumble up the categories of reform and revolution, preferring change that, though perforce piecemeal, may, in its cumulative effect, become revolutionary.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

We cannot form and enhance personality without encouraging strong impulse and strong vision in the individual. Such impulse and such vision must seek a collective voice and a social expression.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

All Roberto Mangabeira Unger quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Roberto Mangabeira Unger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.