Best 433 quotes in «activism quotes» category

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.

When, thirty-five years ago, I tried to give a summary of the ideas and principles of that social philosophy that was once known under the name of liberalism, I did not indulge in the vain hope that my account would prevent the impending catastrophes to which the policies adopted by the European nations were manifestly leading. All I wanted to achieve was to offer to the small minority of thoughtful people an opportunity to learn something about the aims of classical liberalism and its achievements and thus to pave the way for a resurrection of the spirit of freedom after the coming debacle.

When we are able to listen to someone else's story with an open heart and hear their experience, which may look different than ours, we begin to close the gap between them and us.

When we heard at first [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away" because he resisted the government. Which ways have they thrown their lives, pray? ---such would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by their enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not gain a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don;t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul- and what a soul!- when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than a quart of blood, but that is not the market heroes carry their blood to.

While fighting for liberation, it makes no sense for feminists to trample on gays, for gays to trample on the physically challenged, or for the physically challenged to trample on feminists. It also makes no sense for any of these social justice activists to willfully exploit factory farmed animals. Can we not at least avoid exploiting and dominating others while working for our personal liberation?

While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.

While it is one thing to strive for a cause that fundamentally and primarily benefits you—your freedom and equality (or the freedom and equality of those you know and care about), or for your environment (on which you depend for survival)—it is quite another matter to struggle on behalf of a cause that does not benefit you directly.

Whoever educates the children controls the future. If we want a democratic future, we must plant the seeds in our little dandelions nationwide and ensure that our education is governed of, by, and for the people.

While it is one thing to strive for a cause that fundamentally and primarily benefits you—your freedom and equality (or the freedom and equality of those you know and care about), or for your environment (on which you depend for survival)—it is quite another matter to struggle on behalf of a cause that does not benefit you directly. As social justice activists, we must remember how ardently we wish that those in power would help bring change. The oppressed wish that those in power could empathize enough to understand the wrongness of what is happening, and how much they would need and appreciate the active participation of those in power to bring about a measure of justice. With regard to farmed animals, we are the ones who are in power. We are the ones who have the power to change our consumer habits. We are the ones who either put our money down for their lives, or boycott animal products.

Who said talking isn’t doing something?’ she says. It’s more productive than silence.

Why build entirely new systems for connecting to Christ consciousness when the institutions—whether Methodist, Lutheran, or Baptist—have already been created?

Why is it that the people who seem to have the most to say aren’t doing anything at all?

Why do I always listen to your insane plans? Why aren't we at home watching TV like everyone else? What possible difference will any of this make?

Why do you live out here? You're a great healer; you could get work in the inner city if you wanted to. Even in E-star, I bet." "Well, I just don't want to live anywhere else," She looked up, smiling so that the lines at the edges of her eyes crinkled. As she looked out into the expanse of endless desert that led up to the crater wall, she seemed as though her thoughts were far away. "This place is our home. It was my mother's home, and her mother's before that. This is what we know, and even though our lives aren't as long as those with the clean air... this is our land.

Without Love, humanity dies of thirst, grasps at riches, destroys the earth through insatiable greed. Without Love, we are walking dust, dead matter stumbling from the dawn of birth to the dusk of death. Without Love, our Earth is stripped of beingness, left barren and lifeless, a pile of rocks and resources, objects to possess and control. Without Love, humanity sleepwalks as automatons, controlled, manipulated, and shoved through a nightmarish existence.

With all these occurrences of death facing me, I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom, then for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage. If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect. I don't know what's ahead of me in the course of my life and this civilization. I just don't feel I have reached the necessary things inside my history that would ease the pressure in my skull and in my future and in my present. It is exhausting, living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them.

With his face all scrunched up and twisted with anger, he looked just like Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter. Sometimes when someone is making an idiot of themselves, especially on live television, it’s just better to let them go ahead.

With Love, the pivot of change emerges, the lever stretches long enough to move the world, the arc of the universe bends toward justice, the spirit of humanity soars, and the flood of life revives.

With regard to farmed animals, we are the ones who are in power. We are the ones who have the power to change our consumer habits. We are the ones who either put our money down for their lives, or boycott animal products.

You can't stop Greatness; you can only try to delay it. And when you try to delay it, it just gets Greater because it gains new strength.

working on behalf of social justice – working on behalf of nonhuman animals – requires immersion in the horrors of oppression. For the women who have submitted essays for this anthology, immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . ... There is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and trauma: By walking into extreme misery in the hope of exposing injustice and bringing change, these women have moved from helplessness and despair to empowered activism.

Words are fossilized butterfly wings, pretty to look at sometimes, but only good for Museums. I want to miserably burn down the Museums.

Yet in general all writers can really do is lift a sensitive finger to the cultural breeze and sense a coming change in the weather; very seldom do they actually change it themselves.

You can coddle your rage, or you can fully engage.

You cannot change people but you can change the system so that people are not pushed into doing evil things.

You do it for yourself. You don’t expect to change the world. You don’t even expect to influence your family or your friends. You do it because you can’t not do it and be who you are. Or who you’re meant to be.

You don’t have to be a professional troublemaker to take a stand...

You have to do to be.

Activism has always been the driving force for change.

You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center.

Your politics are so far right, They're wrong.

You've got to shake your fists at lightning now. You've got to roar like forest fire.

You ultimately decide, every day, whether or not your life will speak on behalf of the oppressed, or remain an inaudible but decisive tool for the status quo.

Activism is my rent for living on the planet.

Activism, to me, I don't know if it really works. It may work for somebody else, but it does not work for me.

You never do any good until you get into some trouble.

Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.

Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing.

Activism has been very productive in our society.

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.

Alone, no one wins freedom.

art is not advocacy and advocacy is not art.

All activism is fake activism.

Another recollection is that [ Paul Johnson] mostly kept away from ideas and dedicated activism, and concentrated on sex lives and other gossip.

Art is about the edges and the sharp corners and those places are not conducive to activism, which is about putting on a gloss.

Don't slay that potato, let us be merciful please.

As you know, when Star Trek was canceled after the second season, it was the activism of the fans that revived it for a third season.

Channel your outrage ... Do that which you are able to do.

My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.