Ideas are notoriously difficult to erase.

From August Spies and the labour movement, but true of most any movement. Read in the About Haymarket Books section at the end of Rebecca Solnit’s truly excellent book Men Explain Things To Me:

“If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labour movement,” Spies told the judge, “then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.”