Abbie Hoffman (1936–89,) fully Abbot Howard Hoffman, was an American political and social activist and anarchist. He founded the Youth International Party (Yippies.) He remains an icon of the anti-war movement and the counterculture era.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Hoffman received psychology degrees from Brandeis University 1959 and Berkeley 1960. He was active in the civil rights movement before organizing protests against the Vietnam War and the American economic and political system.
In 1968, Hoffman secured his status as a countercultural icon when he organized thousands of protesters outside the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago. The demonstrations disintegrated into a street battle between police and protesters. In the ensuing Chicago Seven trial (1969,) he was convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to riot; the conviction was later overturned.
Hoffman was arrested on charges of selling cocaine in 1973. He skipped bail, went underground, had plastic surgery, took the name Barry Freed, and worked as an environmental activist in New York State. He re-emerged in 1980 and served a year in prison before taking up again his ecological efforts. He died of an intentional phenobarbital overdose in 1989.
Hoffman was the author of such books as Revolution for the Hell of It (1968,) Steal This Book (1971,) and an autobiography, Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (1980.) Hoffman’s life was dramatized in the film Steal This Movie (2000.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Abbie Hoffman
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Revolution, Activism
Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Activism
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Revolution, Activism
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: War
To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Activism
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Present, The Present
Action is the only reality; not only reality, but morality as well.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Secrets of Success
Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Theater
I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries
The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.
—Abbie Hoffman
Topics: Revolution
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