Best 433 quotes in «activism quotes» category

(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of monks and spending the rest of your life in a glass monastery - removed from the world of human affairs even as it continued to whirl around you on all sides. To be a journalist meant you could never be the person who tossed the brick through the window that started the revolution. You could only watch the man toss the brick, you could try to understand why he had tossed the brick, you could explain to others what significance the brick had in starting the revolution, but you yourself could never toss the brick or even stand in the mob that was urging the man to throw it.

Tensurrealism creates actual and non-compromised reality, jamboree, fervor, fascination, poetics of an active enthusiasm, interludium, lyrical practice, active happiness.

The 1970s-80s social movement called U.S. third world feminism functioned as a central locus of possibility, an insurgent social movement that shattered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct site where truth can be represented. Indeed, without making this kind of metamove, any 'liberation' or social movement eventually becomes destined to repeat the oppressive authoritarianism from which it is attempting to free itself, and become trapped inside a drive for truth that ends only in producing its own brand of dominations. What U.S. third world feminism thus demanded was a new subjectivity, a political revision that denied any one ideology as the final answer, while instead positing a tactical subjectivity with the capactiy to de- and recenter, given the forms of power to be moved. These dynamics are what were required in the shift from enacting a hegemonic oppositional theory and practice to engaging in the differential form of social movement, as performed by U.S. feminists of color during the post-World War II period of great social transformation. p. 58-59.

The activist path is not easy, but it is the only reasonable path for those who desire change.

The biggest lesson is you get the country you work for. If you sit back and simply allow your country to be, it is highly unlikely to be the kind of country you want. You have to be active.

The day Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he was going to do everything he could to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, [...] we saw a 900% increase in requests for appointments to get IUDs, a form of birth control that lasts for several years. Women wanted to make sure their birth control would outlast the [new] Administration.

The enemy was not the Klan but the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.

The academic and writer Sara Ahmed has written brilliantly about the idea of the feminist killjoy, and why it should be embraced – because feminism isn’t about making everyone around the table feel comfortable. It’s about being disruptive, challenging, and changing the terms of the debate, so that, over time, almost certainly with discomfort and backlash, everyone becomes freer.

The darkness of ignorance is allergic to the light of your truth. Speak your truth.

The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.

The first right of any person in any society must be the right to communicate. Without communication there is no way to safeguard our other rights or for us to participate fully in a society. When your right to communicate is interrupted by those who would be your voice, your face or your representative, you are being subjected to the governance of another.

The future of journalism is in a stigmergic mesh network of amplifiers, investigators and activists who can filter and fact check news in real time, combine it with investigative global knowledge resources and create appropriate local and / or global action. The future is in collaborative investigators sharing knowledge to map everything we need to know to govern ourselves. The future is in activism and aid requested directly by the people who require it and responded to directly by the people who can provide it. The future is in the right and ability of every single person to broadcast their own voice and call for amplification when needed. The future of journalism is in all of us.

The goal of radicalism is to improve the human condition, not to prove one's own moral superiority.

The hour that was for them, for us, for all who had awakened one morning to see their fields covered with blood rather than harvest, who didn't seek to change the world but lived in good faith and prayer offered to an imposing God, for the young women who mended their men's clothing and held their sons' mouths to the purple nipples of sweet breasts, for the man who watched the suns descend behind the mountain every evening and dreamed and when his sons were grown, passed on his dreams, for the black nights when guitars harmonized with the wind's song, to the bottle of regional brew, and a hand-rolled cigarette, to the baptism and a dance of celebration, to the aroma of soups simmering on wood-burning stoves and filled the bellies of those who worked the fields, to a candle that burned in vigil while a hungry mind gulped the printed truth of another's legacy, to the owl that called from between the moon and earth while lovers enwrapped their passion on silver tinted grass, to the history of the world and to its future, to all that had lived and died and had been born again in that moment as i approached am opaque window and pointed my weapon.

The innumerable losses of industrial civilization’s collapse will, over time, bring forth a new story and a new relationship with people, resources, things, and the earth. It will necessitate living as if our very breath is a gift and every person in our lives is an opportunity to pass on the gifts we have received. The death of the old paradigm and all of the trappings of industrial civilization will provide space to forge new values, new relationships, and minimize, if not completely obliterate, the concept of debt from human consciousness.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test.

The longer you wait for the future, the shorter it will be.

The most effective form of activism is kindness.

Then all at once he´d hear his own voice enunciating clearly and firmly, feel its reverberance along the walls and ceiling, feel ears growing tense, men and women leaning forward in their chairs, see the rows of faces quite clearly, the groups of people who couldn´t find seats crowding at the doors. Phrases like `protest, massaction, united working-class of this country and the world, revolution´, would light up the eyes and faces under him like the glare of a bonfire.

The naively cynical measure a piece of legislation, a victory, a milestone not against the past or the limits of the possible, but against their ideas of perfection...

The only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being safe!

The path towards peace is not for the righteous, the ethical, the active and the compassionate to shit on the malicious, the complacent, the violent and the ignorant. The path towards peace is to be peaceful.

The physical threat posed by climate change represents a crisis that is not only material but also profoundly spiritual at its core because it challenges us to think seriously about the future of the human race and what it means to be a human being.

The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.

The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events... by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.

The price of conviction has never been cheap, but it will always be worth it.

The power of your story may not lie in its drama, but in its absolutely perfect relationship to your cause.

There is no politically neutral fence available for us to sit on, and our attempts to do so have the consequence (intended or not) of supporting the existing political system.

There is an ugly, unmentioned truth behind a feminist’s tendency to associate women with men, rather than with similarly exploited pigs or cattle: Those who purposefully distance women from other female animals hope to liberate female humans while leaving nonhuman animals in the category of exploitable “other." But it is reprehensible for individuals who are seeking release from oppression to purposefully leave others in the dungeons of exploitation—even to condemn others to such exploitation—in the process of working to extricate themselves. In any event, this selfish approach has not worked, and the reason for this seems somewhat obvious: As long as we foster power-over—whether over pigs or turkeys or women—most human females will remain under the control of men, along with pigs and cows and chickens (who will generally remain yet lower on the rungs of power). In seeking to stand above nonhuman females, women help to maintain a hierarchy through which they are held below men. As long as we support a hierarchy, as long as we support a system which grants some individuals power over other individuals, men will dominate over women. Hierarchies entail power-over, and the power of one individual over another inevitably supports oppression.

There is a stereotype that vegans talk about being vegan all the time. The irony is, once people find out I’m vegan, I quickly become their confessor, counselor, and sounding board.

There is no one story that will replace the American dream, but stories like this one—and there are thousands—can inform the myth or myths we create for building and preserving the next culture. In order to do so, however, we must recognize that we cannot live without myth, for it is an essential part of our humanity. If we attempt to do so—given the fact that something in us needs myth—we will only create more myths that echo the American dream—with themes of heroism, greed, entitlement, narcissism, exploitation, exceptionalism, and myriad abuses of power. How we prepare for and navigate collapse will provide the raw materials for the myths we make and will live by in a postindustrial world.

There's a certain drama in going down in a good cause. Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. But, -Dr. Lamont, to do that one has to have a fighting chance. One has to have something to fight for that may— justmay— win out.

There is nothing like the whites of someone’s eyes to convince you how very true what you believe is, how very much you must act on it.

There is no way to tell if we are the pioneers of a visionary new age, whisking humanity into the high vibrations of an interdimensional love party, or post-modern Don Quixotes attacking techno-industrial windmills with our flimsy, rolled-up yoga mats.

There's a kind of activism that's more about bolstering identity than achieving results, one that sometimes seems to make the left the true heirs of the Puritans. Puritanical in that the point becomes the demonstration of one's own virtue rather than the realization of results. And puritanical because the somber pleasure of condemning things is the most enduring part of that legacy, along with the sense of personal superiority that comes from pleasure denied. The bleakness of the world is required as contrasting backdrop to the drama of their rising above.

…There’s forty-two thousand jobs, near ten thousand of ’em got by people like us. Everyone’s gotta eat. Industry feeds ’em. They figure Little Bear here’s gonna clean it up." He squeezed his baby, a dimpled plump girl with tufts of jet-black hair. "Paa paa ba baaa!" she said. It was time for a nap. Lou sipped from his thermos, and Little Bear’s eyes drooped, and Missy remembered the voice of Rasmus Krook. 'The people will pay with their whole being: physically, mentally, ideologically, spiritually, with their land, their soul. And not just country people. Not just native people. Poison will flow through villages, towns, and cities and not stop. We must rise up. We must disrupt the system. Capitalism is a deception.' "You can help pirates," she said, because that’s the only answer she knew. Lou lifted his coffee in salute, and Missy stood up to jump.

The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual that ultimately makes the difference—by offering living proof.

There is something so degrading - at least, one would think that there were something so degrading in the practice of writing as a trade - that anyone who has once earned a livelihood, or part of it, obviously and openly, by popular writing, can never be seriously regarded by any great number of people. And then, of course, "he does too much.

There's no risk on the path to bliss Be your own activist Imagine altering the process of thoughts to positive and passionate Honing in on habits of happiness

The revolution that counts is the one that takes place in the imagination; many kinds of change issue forth thereafter, some gradual and subtle, some dramatic and conflict-ridden--which is to say that revolution doesn't necessarily look like revolution.

There was something distinctly American about it all, a fundamental difference in perspective and place–in how they saw themselves in the world. And this was what made it so American–not that they felt compassion for mistreated workers three continents away, workers they had never seen or known, whose world they could not begin to understand, not that they felt guilty about their privilege, no,no not that either, but that they felt the need to do something. That they felt they had to power to do something about it. That was what made it so American. That they felt they had the power to do something–they assumed they had that power. They had been born with it–the ability to change the world–and had never questioned its existence, an assumption so massive as to remain unseen. The power and the responsibility to protect the people they imagined as powerless. The poor defenseless people of the Third World. He felts a sudden queasy sadness. What if they knew what a real revolutionary was? How bloody a real revolution. He looked around, suddenly feeling the need to sit, and saw nothing but their faces, their round wet faces staring back at him. What a violence of spirit not to know the world.

The strength of a movement also relied on participation. Nonviolent campaigns succeeded or failed by the numbers of people willing to get in the way of injustice, or withdraw support from tyrants, or put their hands on the freedom plow and sow the seeds of change.

[The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being synonymous with civilization and its cultivation as coming from its natural abilities and not from its wealth and privileged opportunities. It doesn't see that the way in which it monopolizes these things distorts the culture it derives from them and that this makes its culture irrational and an enemy of civilization.

The space between the private and the public is the nexus of the personal and the social, if not political. It’s where we meet the strong or subtle cultural censors who attempt to define what community, race, class, or gender can or cannot speak, to tell us which stories are told and valued and which are not. In short, it’s where we’re reminded of the power of personal stories and the power of the storyteller.

The role of an activist is not to lead the masses with a flag draped around his or her shoulders. Activists meet a few people at a time in a coffee shop to explain in hushed tones why they should believe when no one else does. An activist’s moment is not the moment of change; it is the period when change seems impossible.

The speaker calls for a careful examination of Christ's principle of turning the other cheek before we use it as a demand or excuse for total personal pacifism. After all, when literally struck on the cheek, Jesus did question the legitimacy of the authority by which this was done.

The term 'politics of prefiguration' has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it's a temporary and local place...

The whole "Resist" movement is a form of Stolen Valor by pretenders to the courage of the WWII French Resistance.

The vision of the ideal life that we've been taught in the West, which is gaining ever more purchase in China and India and elsewhere, feeds the system we need to undo. Go to school in order to get a degree in order to get a job in order to earn money so you can try to buy happiness because your life sucks, then retire and die: this is not meaningful living.

The U.S. system of justice contains laws whereby nonhuman animals have no legal standing, but are defined as “property,” as wives and enslaved Africans once were. Other animals (including mice, rats, and birds) are excluded from the legal definition of “animal” in the U.S., thereby denying these individuals whatever slight protection might be provided by U.S. animal welfare laws, and allowing science to use these sentient beings in any way researchers see fit, without fear of legal sanction. Other speciesist laws prevent animal advocates from using free speech on behalf of hunted animals, while protecting right-to-life advocates who speak out on behalf of fetuses. Institutionalized support for the systematic oppression of nonhuman animals is also evident in the recent Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, as well as in the mainstream media, both of which – unbelievably – label animal advocates as “terrorists.