Frances Fox Piven Quotes

#1. I think that the question of how power can be exerted from the lower reaches has never been more important. It will ultimately determine whether another world is indeed possible.

Frances Fox Piven

#2. The only way to change American society, and indeed I think this is true of other societies as well, is for people to discover the power latent in the cooperative roles that they play in a range of institutions.

Frances Fox Piven

#3. I propose that there is another kind of power based not on resources, things, or attributes, but rooted in the social and cooperative relations in which people are enmeshed by virtue of group life.

Frances Fox Piven

#4. I remember my father explaining, "A capitalist system is a dog-eat-dog system."

Frances Fox Piven

#5. I believe in the necessity for struggle by people at the bottom of any society.

Frances Fox Piven

#6. I had no intention of becoming an academic. How could a person who was having trouble reading become an academic?

Frances Fox Piven

#7. Indeed, in US politics, 'poverty', along with 'welfare', 'unwed mothers' and 'crime', became code words for blacks.

Frances Fox Piven