Best 433 quotes in «activism quotes» category

Every crisis, actual or impending, needs to be viewed as an opportunity to bring about profound changes in our society. Going beyond protest organizing, visionary organizing begins by creating images and stories of the future that help us imagine and create alternatives to the existing system.

Every human had the seed of rebellion hardwired into their heart. Squeeze the shell of conformity hard enough and it cracks, allowing the spirit of resistance to burst forth.

Everything's urgent to a Democrat.

Extract and expel implicit biases from your work life. Don't taint our visitors with your bias and views. Allow them to form their own conclusions where it's developmentally appropriate.

Feeling anger is necessary; it’s what we do with anger that will make or break us.

Finding ways to appreciate advances without embracing complacency is a delicate task. It involves being hopeful and motivated and keeping eyes on the prize ahead. Saying that everything is fine or that it will never get any better are ways of going nowhere or of making it impossible to go anywhere. Either approach implies that there is no road out or that, if there is, you don’t need to or can’t go down it. You can. We have.

Flo especially took me in hand. When I felt I had to prove the existence of discrimination with statistics, for instance, she pulled me aside. 'If you're lying in the ditch with a truck on your ankle,' she said patiently, 'you don't send someone to the library to find out how much the truck weighs. You get it off!

For all of the pedestals MLK is now put on, far above the reach of ordinary black Americans, Martin was in his life viewed as the most dangerous man in America.

For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible...

For a man who makes his salvation perfect through suffering, is more of a saint and a loving hero of nature.

For the love of one person, we can find the strength to love the whole world.

Governance to me is action not an organization. It is something people have to just do. It is only after governance by the people is established that politicians can be lobbied into supporting it until it makes them obsolete.

From the comfort of our own homes its hard to understand the complexities of something like poverty and homelessness.

Fundamentally, what all forms of positive thinking about collapse come down to is our own fear of death.

‎God remains silent so that men and women may speak, protest, and struggle. God remains silent so that people may really become people. When God is silent and men and women cry, God cries in solidarity with them but doesn't intervene. God waits for the shouts of protest.

Gratitude is a state of mind that inherently recognizes interdependence with the external world, whether it be other humans, nature, the sacred, or a combination of these.

From this perspective, we were all divine Shakespeares, creating and playing the roles of muscled heroes and conniving villains, pious saints and debauched sinners, corrupt CEOs and disinterested temp workers.

Gender is just one of many systems of oppression. The ultimate goal is to see how all systems are tied in a knot with the others and untie, unravel the knots of oppression. It's a spiritual journey more than a governmental one. It's about asking ourselves, 'Is this culture stopping me or anyone else from the free expression of sex and gender?' and if so, we have to act.

Gradualism veiled as hope is all too often a balm to the privileged and a poison to the oppressed.

Having an open mind means learning too add more to our already existing beliefs about affirming dignity of those who are impoverished.

Here, poverty in the United States is a choice. Stagnant middle-class incomes are a choice. Technology-fueled mass unemployment is a choice. Racism is a choice. The patriarchy is a choice. This is not to discount how deeply entrenched existing policies, interests, and tendencies are - but to recognize that while they might be entrenched, they are not immutable.

He could take on anything and everything, it seemed, rather than leave himself time to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his life and what he might do about it.

Home was within.
 Home was without.
 Home was here and now. 
Home was everything that already was and always is. There were so many chases and trips, and directions and events and places and experiments, and relationships all searching and never finding.
It wasn't anything I ever expected. It wasn't anywhere I expected it. Or with who. It didn't come into being by me doing anything. It simply existed within my heart space, when I could look at and be with and face my fear, knowing it was only an illusion to keep me from seeing the truth.
The truth of myself. In love. 
Eyes wide open.
 Home.

History has seen many who claim to be deliverer and saviour of the people. They might come with force and violence and parade their might and splendour as conquerors. The pharaohs of Egypt, Sennacherib king of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Darius of Persia, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Napoleon, Clive of India, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin. The story and scene is always the same. They claim to deliver the people from bondage and to establish justice, freedom and peace. They come in might, riding in splendour, dragging prisoners.

Home is where you feel safe, a place with people you can count on and where you can be yourself

Hopefulness is risky, since it is after all a form of trust, trust in the unknown and the possible, even in discontinuity. To be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal...

Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed.

Horizontal governance does not mean no one gets a voice, it means everyone does. A person or group who attempts to suppress the voices of others is attempting to seize control.

I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie.

How do you photograph injustice? It is the easiest to photograph, for it is as common as the number of people on the earth; each person staggers under its weight.

How many little kids were being orphaned or killed, right that minute, while I was sitting there watching TV?

I am political in spite of myself. I don't want to do the things I know I have to do, don't want to expose myself to disapproval, to retribution, don't want to go to meetings and demonstrations, distribute leaflets, don't want to ask people for signatures, for money. I don't do these things as naturally as I breathe, the way I imagine real political people do, real communists, real socialists and feminists, real radicals, real troublemakers, real champions of the people. I do them because I know I've got to, because I am convinced it's the only way to make changes, to stop abuses. I do them almost as a last resort. I do them because I've been putting off doing them, avoiding them for months, because finally the necessity has gripped me and overcome my reluctance, my desire for the warmth of my room, for my books, for my people, for the reassurance of my homely habits.

I believe in hope as an act of defiance, or rather as the foundation for an ongoing series of acts of defiance, those acts necessary to bring about some of what we hope for while we live by principle in the meantime. There is no alternative, except surrender. And surrender not only abandons the future, it abandons the soul.

How can you not be involved? These are your times, your world, even if those events are on the other side of it. And as for the narrative--you are a part of that, for better or for worse, whether the grey inexorable economic inevitabilities--recessions and recoveries and having less money or more--or the grand perilous global story.

How do the day’s event(s) compare with the famous quote you’ve picked to write about in So This Just Happened: The Journal for USA Current Events? Journal your thoughts on current events inside, in light of the 101 famous and thought-provoking quotes about the United States of America, democracy and more. Abnormal times call for first person accounts: witness current events compared to the United States of America’s values, laws, and principles. So This Just Happened: The Journal for USA Current Events includes 101 thought-provoking and insightful quotes by Founding Fathers’, famous historical figures, past Presidents and more for you to compare and contrast with current events. With a quote on every other lined journal page; you can write in order or flip to the most relevant quote for the day’s events to write about. Each lined page for you to write on has a spot to write the date at the top.

I am saying that there is a time to do, and a time not to do, and that when we are slave to the habit of doing we are unable to distinguish between them.

If I were to do nothing, I'd be guilty of complicity.

If collapse is anything, it is a planetary immersion in the maelstrom of paradox. Unless we understand and honor paradox, we will end up, like all of the mainstream media on earth, asking all of the wrong questions.

If, having endured much, we have at last asserted out "right to know," and if by knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us.

If not you, who? If not now, when? The worst thing well-meaning people can do is simply let things remain as they are.

I don't think that God says, "Go to church and pray all day and everything will be fine." No. For me God says, "Go out and make the changes that need to be made, and I'll be there to help you.

I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.

If a fight looks like a lot of fun, you should be suspicious. 'If you ain't scared of standing up for what's right, you ain't standing up for much.

If one wants to act, the dilemma is how and where; there is no "when?" with time running out, the time is obviously now.

If Paul Revere had been a modern day citizen, he wouldn't have ridden down Main Street. He would have tweeted.

If we truly believe in the power of cultural institutions to impact communities and engage authentically with social justice issues, if we believe in museums’ capacity to bring about social change, improve cultural awareness, and even transform the world, than we must also believe that our internal practices have an impact, and must act according to the changes we seek.

If the apostles reminded even Paul himself to remember the poor (Galatians 2:10), then surely the rest of us need such a reminder.

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.

If you don't challenge things, all you have done is passed it on to the next woman to deal with.