Best 433 quotes in «activism quotes» category

To me, one quality of disability justice culture is that it is simultaneously beautiful and practical. Poetry and dance are as valuable as a blog post about access hacks - because they're equally important and interdependent.

To retain our dignity, we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost

To reform the world - means to reform upbringing...

To say that the emperor has no clothes is a nice anti-authoritarian gesture, but to say that everything without exception is going straight to hell is not an alternative vision but only an inverted version of the mainstream's 'everything's fine.

To spend one's life being angry, and in the process doing nothing to change it, is to me ridiculous. I could be mad all day long, but if I'm not doing a damn thing, what difference does it make?

Trust is a seed that grows with attention and space. The facilitator can be a gardener, or the sun, the water.

Understanding the shadow masculine or shadow feminine in oneself is crucial not only for enhancing one ’s own wholeness but for championing justice between genders and all diverse groups in the community. If the shadow is not recognized and dealt with, it will dominate an individual or . . . community, resulting in untold suffering.

Unlike Americans, who value egalitarian relationships, the Chinese recognize the hierarchical nature of relationships that have uneven power dynamics. Since it is easy for those with power to become paternalistic or patronizing when they serve others, we must learn Christ's humility and self-emptying. As we fill our different roles, we need to fulfill our responsibilities with love and a humbleness to serve. This Chinese understanding of humility serves as a helpful counterbalance to American approaches to urban ministry and development. As guests in any community, we need to approach our neighbors empty of expectations and plans. Instead, we must become reliant on the people of peace whom God sends out. When doing ministry, our joy and strength cannot be based on our own success or power. We receive these gifts only when being guests of the King and recognizing our limitations while in exile.

Until you find a cause you can die for, you are not worthy to live.

Violence is central to patriarchy, and Western society’s various forms of systemic violence are interconnected. Recognizing similarities across forms of oppression such as racism, child abuse, speciesism, and sexism, for example, is essential . . . . We can curb this tendency only if all forms of violence are exposed and challenged—rape and slaughter, rodeos and brothels. We cannot expect to put out the fire by removing only one coal.

Violence is the power of the state; imagination and non-violence the power of civil society.

We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.

War...is ugly and brutalizing, and the nobility is in doing it without becoming ugly and brutalizing.

We are living in a moment where we have broken the equilibrium of the planet. We are not paying attention to our intuitive side. We only pay attention to our reason. We have become an urban animal

Wasting time on timing stuff is a good way to save time from being wasted on other pointless activities like writing, reading, and sleeping.

We are beginning to understand that the world is always being made fresh and never finished; that activism can be the journey rather than the arrival; that's struggle doesn't always have to be confrontational but can take the form of reaching out to find common ground with the many others in our society who are also seeking ways out from alienation, isolation, privatization, and dehumanization by corporate globalization.

We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act.

We cannot do everything, but we can all do something.

We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves.

We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

We cannot afford to be discouraged from challenging the corporate control of our food system, our genetic commons, our shared resources, or our democracy. The history of social change in our nation shows that the political system can be reformed, even if the road is long and zigzag.

We cannot end just one form of oppression, so we need to be on board with other activists. If we are not, we doom social justice activists to perpetually pulling up the innumerable shoots that spring from the very deep roots of oppression. Furthermore, inability to see one’s own privilege and ignorance of the struggles that others face (in a homophobic, racist, ageist, ableist, sexist society) are major impediments to social justice activism. Those who are privileged must give way so that others can take the lead, bringing new social justice concerns and methods to the activist’s table.

We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

We can't achieve zero waste without reuse.

We felt as though we had a responsibility to do something about it. So, we did.

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

We inhabit, in ordinary daylight, a future that was unimaginably dark a few decades ago, when people found the end of the world easier to envision than the impending changes in everyday roles, thoughts, practices that not even the wildest science fiction anticipated. Perhaps we should not have adjusted to it so easily. It would be better if we were astonished every day.

We Lesbian Avengers have built this shrine. It stands for our fear. It stands for our grief. It stands for our rage. And it enshrines our intention to live fully and completely as who we are, wherever we are. We take the fire of action into our hearts. And we take it into our bodies. And we stand, here and now, to make it known that we are here, and here we will stay. Our fear does not consume us. Their fire will not consume us. We take that fire, and we make it our own.

We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer. Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.

We need to remind the peers of the bully that they benefit from bullying even if they are not themselves the transgressors. Indeed, they benefit from it, but they are tarnished by it. To chip away at the humanity of select groups is to chip away at humanity itself.

We need to stop fighting the old systems and start creating new containers for people who are going through these spiritual openings,’ Tavis reflected. ‘Together, we need to build something that’s never existed before—a global network of light.

We need the right kind of world, the most just economy and social relations, and a rich diversity of human character in order to flourish".

We often fear that the Revolution needed is too big for what we can give. Too much change is required inside, outside. And we are too small. But all that is required is that you step into the truth of your life. And speak it, write it, paint it, dance it. That you shine your light on your truth, for the world to see. And as hundreds, then thousands, then millions do this – each sparking the courage of yet more – Suddenly we have a world alight with truth.

We should refrain from adopting laws that would allow countries with poor scorecard on human rights to exploit backdoors on techs for silencing dissent.

We sing lyrical excess, exacerbated expressionism, imponed objectivity, inventiveness, meta-baroque, extravaganza, super metaphor, sublimity, strident, exposure, super-pone, noise, super-objectivity, zillionism, fragmentation and aesthetics of facts, suractivism.

We urgently need to do - and I mean actually do - something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don't think we will. I think we're fucked.

We've reached a poor state when people are afraid that doing the decent and right thing is going to help the communist conspiracy.

We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.

We write history with our feet and with our presece and our collective voice and vision. And yet, of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. These are the forces that prefer the giant remain asleep.

What good is a revolution anyway if it isn’t joyful?

What does it mean to demonstrate in the streets, what is the significance of that collective activity so symptomatic of the twentieth century? In stupefaction Ulrich watches the demonstrators from the window; as they reach the foot of the palace, their faces turn up, turn furious, the men brandish their walking sticks, but “a few steps farther, at a bend where the demonstration seemed to scatter into the wings, most of them were already dropping their greasepaint: it would be absurd to keep up the menacing looks where there were no more spectators.” In the light of that metaphor, the demonstrators are not men in a rage; they are actors performing rage! As soon as the performance is over they are quick to drop their greasepaint! Later, in the 1960s, philosophers would talk about the modern world in which everything had turned into spectacle: demonstrations, wars, and even love; through this “quick and sagacious penetration” (Fielding), Musil had already long ago discerned the “society of spectacle.

What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial... [i]nstead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick.

What is a movement, after all, but the embodiment of aspirations turned into organized action by thousands and millions of people?

What is your talent? What are your interests? What resources do you have at your disposal? What can you do? What would you like to do? What can you do? You could apply your outrage to activism. Get involved. Do something.

What lies ahead seems unlikely; when it becomes the past, it seems inevitable.

[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him.

What we see in the world around us is just a reflection of what is inside of us.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

What we're left with ... is the distinctly uncomfortable sense that much of what we call culture jamming achieves the same effect as traditional marketing. Both rely on the bedrock principle that branding works. Yet marketing has moved on from branding toward a more direct emotional connection to our reptilian brains, which makes it immune to the cognitive dissonance culture jamming creates. In the meantime, the brans being promoted by some activists retain the full integrity of their original message,

What you buy doesn't make you cool, it makes you the opposite. Stop buying stuff just to have more stuff. Most of us have enough of everything already. Let's care for what we've got, instead, and dispose of our disposable society.