Best 372 quotes in «social justice quotes» category

I never wanted to safe... I wanted to be good.

In general, people’s views of the Old Testament have often been determined by the picture they see of its social consequences and implications.

In order to break free from the chains that bind, one must take whatever action they can to disconnect internally from the larger systems of oppression, of which the family unit is merely a microcosm.

In our opinion, there is no public good other than one that assures the citizens' private good; we judge institutions from the point of view of the concrete opportunities they give to individuals. But neither do we confuse the idea of private interest with happiness[...]. We cannot really know what the word 'happiness' means, and still less what authentic values it covers; there is no way to measure the happiness of others, and it is always easy to call a situation that one would like to impose on others happy: in particular, we declare happy those condemned to stagnation, under the pretext that happiness is immobility.

Instead of using His righteousness as an excuse to distance Himself from people, God’s righteousness means that He comes so close that He can save His people.

In the end, what I've learned is that when it comes to this type of science, you really can't be arrogant and assume you know the answers. Arrogance by these companies and by the government is what got us into all this in the first place.

In the racist, sexist United States, nonwhite racialized minorities—and women in particular—are subjected to more than their share of horrific violence, but no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in factory farms or laboratories. . . . The legal status of women and nonwhite racialized minorities has improved markedly in the past fifty years; matters have grown considerably worse for nonhuman animals.

In the spirit of being a reflective practitioner of ourselves we must notice your own behavior as an educator and realize how it influences other. Recognize your privileges: race, gender, ability, career, citizenship, language is all privilege. Imagine how you feel in the visitors shoes and adjust to best help them process and contextualize.

In thirty years, the narratives of my sons will be different from mine. Because today I am telling my truth and standing in a pool of my trauma, making myself uncomfortable and, hopefully, making you uncomfortable too. Today, I am making it known that when color is clear, when race and inequity are not ignored, and when our differences are not only acknowledged but championed as one of the most valuable aspects of life, we can work together to make meaningful strides toward true social justice.

It is difficult for men to measure the enormous extent of social discrimination that seems insignificant form the outside and whose moral and intellectual repercussions are so deep in woman that they appear to spring from an original nature. The man most sympathetic to women never knows her concrete situation fully.

I raise my voice not so that i can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard

I thought that righteous people were the types that liked rules for the sake of rules. But really, righteous people love things like people, relationship, happiness, connection, holistic prosperity, and community.

It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!

It is difficult to ascertain what role these articles play in marginalizing the vegetarian experience when there are so many more pressing issues that confront individuals who might otherwise choose to try to become vegetarian or vegan, such as the lack of healthy affordable food in low-income neighborhoods, often largely inhabited by people of color, and a government that subsidizes and promotes animal and sugar-heavy diets over ones with vegetables and fruits. yet rather than focus on these series structural barriers, many articles on vegetarianism and veganism often present the challenge of avoiding meat and animal products as challenge to one's very own normalcy and acceptability.

It is easy for us to accept that the division of people into 'superiors' and 'commoners' is a figment of the imagination. Yet the idea that all humans are equal is also a myth. [...] Advocates and of equality and human rights may be outraged by this line of reasoning. Their response is likely to be 'We know that people are not equal biologically! But if we believe that we are all equal in essence, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.' I have no argument with that. That is exactly what I mean by 'imagined order'. We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. Bear in mind, though, that Hammurabi might have defended his principle of hierarchy using the same logic: 'I know that superiors, commoners and slaves are not inherently different kinds of people. But if we believe that they are, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.

It is entirely possible to work for justice without thirsting for blood.

It is increasingly difficult for social justice activists to advocate – with a clear conscience – for women, the poor, or immigrants while eating other animals or consuming the nursing milk of cattle. Animal activists are exposing the links that connect the oppression of nonhuman animals with human oppression.

It is increasingly difficult for social justice activists to advocate – with a clear conscience – for women, the poor, or immigrants while eating other animals or consuming the nursing milk of cattle. Animal activists have already begun to effectively expose the links of oppression across species.

It is in the face of this radical revisioning of ourselves as the community of Christ that our relationship to “the least of these” is formed. They don’t represent a threat to our lives, both physically (in their demands on our resources, in the loss of safety) and existentially (in how they expose our pretense, our privilege), but they actually can be seen as Christ Himself. Not in some romantic, shallow way in which we take in the homeless beggar only to have him later throw off his rags to reveal himself as Jesus, rewarding us for our righteousness. No, we encounter Christ in them because the process we have gone through has demonstrated to us that in the other—in those most different from us—our own inadequacy is exposed, offering us the opportunity to embrace the gift of the transforming cross.

I think there some kind of instinct connection between me and children. When I see children I find it quiet hard to take my eyes off them, and I could not hold my smile either. I really love their simplicity and innocence. If everyone would've have been childlike, not childish, the world would be a better place.

[I]t is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider...You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive.

It is far harder to make a believer into a skeptic than to make a skeptic into a believer.

It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim.

...it is the most militant, most radical intervention anyone can make to not only speak of love, but to engage in the practice of love. For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy. Anytime we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination.

It is the people who are displeased with injustice that can be a channel for social justice.

It might seem that righteousness means you have to live up to God’s standards, like when you are in school and have to do everything right in order to get a good grade. But a better way to think of righteousness is living inside God’s intended order.

It’s not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys, it’s homophobia. It’s not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; it’s racism. It’s not having vaginas that makes life harder for women, it’s sexism. And it’s ageism, far more than the passage of time, that makes growing older harder for all of us.

It’s not the word that’s important, it’s the right to say any word you want to and to form any sentence you want to, that’s the point and once they start to legally restrict what we can say and what we can’t say then we are on a slippery slope to authoritarianism.” “We’re talking about racists,” said Karen. “No one should be allowed to be racist,” said Mark. “But that’s not down to the Government or the courts,” said Rob desperately, “that should be down to us, we should make it difficult for people to be racist, we should frown upon such language and activity, it should be by peer pressure that we stop people from being abusive and unpleasant, not down to the Government.” “Why not?” demanded Karen, “they make the laws so it’s down to them to make the punishments.” “It’s not about punishment,” pressed Rob, “it’s about morality and social conscience, it’s about standing up for what’s right versus moral laziness, it’s about courage versus cowardice.

It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures.

It was around this time that I started thinking about how skin color defined class. The cowboy movies that fueled the goodness of ‘White’ reinforced attaching ‘darkness’ to a class. I finally took notice that the crayon color called ‘flesh’ did not match mine.

Julia supposed that there was also a difference in perspective: 'The practical level was another level down [in 1960s social movements] and not so interesting. I don't know much about organizing, but I feel as though, if the reality of the situation doesn't change people's heads, then nothing's going to change their heads. Marches and those things are not the work of it. The work of it is whatever the work is.

It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.

I've also represented people who have committed terrible crimes but nonetheless struggle to recover and to find redemption. I have discovered, deep in the hearts of many condemned and incarcerated people, the scattered traces of hope and humanity - seeds of restoration that come to astonishing life when nurtured by very simple interventions. Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. My work with the poor and incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I've come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it's never to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and - perhaps - we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

I would subject myself a black man's harassment a thousand times over rather than watch his face hit the pavement with a police officer's weight on his back. That's not justice. That is a betrayal.

Just one person and an idea. Sometimes that's all it takes, in the end.

I want to understand about change--I don't just want to be at the mercy of it. I feel like I'm waking up inside. I want to know about history. I have all this new information about people like me down through the ages, but I don't know anything about the ages.

I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?

Justice and righteousness” was never meant to be the work of only one person, or one part of society. It should be the foundation of how everyone stewards their lives, as well as an integral, normal part of all of society. Every aspect of this world needs God’s “justice and righteousness.

Justice is not blind, and she wears stilettos.

Let's make justice a process, not an afterthought

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.

Justice is to social justice like a chair to an electric chair.

Life wants to live, but more than that, it wants to love.

Jesus knew that addressing inner spiritual poverty brought the greatest type of freedom.

Love demanded this of everyone. To care, not just about one person, but about the whole world. To work for justice, not just for those we know, but for everyone we don't. To keep not just our loved ones safe, but also keep the beloveds of strangers safe. To treat others with as much dignity and respect as we ourselves wish to be treated.

Living democracy grows like a tree, from the bottom up.

Negroes were constantly being arrested in the city, for crimes they committed and for crimes they did not, for rudeness or talking back or looking at a white woman, for being in the wrong neighborhood or being suspected of being in the vicinity of the wrong neighborhood. Upon conviction, many of these men were, in the words of one historian, "literally sold to the highest bidders." Convicts were much in demand as workers, and the state, not the convict, got the wage.

More than being humans, we need peace and love. More than being strong and capable, we need compassion. More than being clever, we need kindness and gentleness.

Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis - they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.

Maggie knew Betsy was a female crusader, but also knew that many times crusaders like her were only interested in their own personal equality.