Quotes by Activists - Page 2

We must reject the artificial and embrace what is real and true: truth in food, community, relationships and self.
Bryant McGill
As we crossed the Malakand Pass I saw a young girl selling oranges. She was scratching marks on a scrap of paper with a nail to account for the oranges she had sold as she could not read or write. I took a photo of her and vowed I would do everything in my power to help educate girls just like her. This was the war I was going to fight.
Malala Yousafzai
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
Mahatma Gandhi
I am not built for academic writings. Action is my domain.
Mahatma Gandhi
All of society’s problems which could be solved by money, were caused by money.
Heather Marsh
Economist Marvin Harris described women as a "literate and docile" labor pool, and "therefore desirable candidates for the information- and people-processing jobs thrown up by modern service industries." The qualities that best serve employers in such a labor pool's workers are: low self-esteem, a tolerance for dull repetitive tasks, lack of ambition, high conformity, more respect for men (who manage them) than women (who work beside them), and little sense of control over their lives.
Naomi Wolf
The truth is now as it was yesterday, and as it always will be, that the world is-as we are.
Bryant McGill
Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, it once again teaches our children the myth of redemptive violence, the myth that violence can be an instrument for good.
Shane Claiborne
The storm is out there and every one of us must eventually face the storm. When the storm comes, pray that it will shake you to your roots and break you wide-open. Being broken open by the storm is your only hope. When you are broken open you get to discover for the first time what is inside you. Some people never get to see what is inside them; what beauty, what strength, what truth and love. They were never broken open by the storm. So, don't run from your pain — run into your pain. Let life's storm shatter you.
Bryant McGill
If you can begin to believe in your own beauty, you can then begin to believe in the beauty of others.
Bryant McGill
When you demand perfection within yourself, you become more fallible.
Bryant McGill
Only God is awesome.
Shane Claiborne
This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture -civilization- is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.
Derrick Jensen
Truth resides in every human heart,and one has to search for it there,and to be guided by truth as one sees it.But no one has a right to coerce othersto act according to his own view of truth.
Mahatma Gandhi
Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't.
Gloria Steinem
Every soul is beautiful and precious; is worthy of dignity and respect, and deserving of peace, joy and love.
Bryant McGill
In reverent pauses, when we slow down and think about the gift of life, we may briefly touch humility.
Bryant McGill
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
Maya Angelou
It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten another’s dull task. What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchanges of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?
Helen Keller
The stories I tell myself about myself are contexts for what I believe is possible. These stories affect not only my attitudes about myself and others, but affect my behavior in what could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sharon Weil
Hopefully and devoutly focus on your greater possibilities.
Bryant McGill
I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower - the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
Helen Keller
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
James Baldwin
Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.
Edward Carpenter
People can cry much easier than they can change.
James Baldwin
Women are an eternal subject, which is a lot like being subjected, or subjugated, or a subject nation, even. There are comparatively few articles about whether men are happy or why their marriages also fail or how nice or not their bodies are, even the movie-star bodies. They are the gender that commits the great majority of crime, particularly violent crime, and they are the majority of suicides as well. American men are falling behind women in attending college, and have fallen farther in the current economic depression than women, which you'd think would make them interesting subjects of inquiry.
Rebecca Solnit
Your past is like a bag of bricks; set it down and walk away. Quit collecting every painful word, memory and mistake. Collect hope.
Bryant McGill
And for those of us from communities with historic collective trauma, we must understand that each of us is already science fiction walking around on two legs. Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us.
Walidah Imarisha
In your serenity there is a clarity, strength and correctness that is beyond the petty scuffles of the moment — a greater truth. It is the truth of who you are; beautiful, calm, secure, open, willing and safe.
Bryant McGill
The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant are:I need to control your every move or you will do it wrong.I know the exact way that everything should be done.You shouldn’t have anyone else — or any thing else — in your life besides me.I am going to watch you like a hawk to keep you from developing strength or independence.I love you more than anyone in the world, but you disgust me. (!!)
Lundy Bancroft
Most of the time, if you treat people right, you don't have to be afraid of them.
Kathy Kelly
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched-they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller
I bout a bag of tortilla chips that was almost as big as me. And I bought some work clothes and a pair of Adidas that I could never imagine affording before in my life.So far, America was very impressive.
Yeonmi Park
Every woman was once a little girl with big dreams. Believe in yourself and never quit dreaming!
Bryant McGill
Spurred by Amy’s death I’ve tried to salvage unwilling victims from the mayhem of the internal storm and am always, always just pulled inside myself.
Russell Brand
Run, leap and celebrate for you are alive today!
Bryant McGill
Laugh and make the best of every situation. Understand that life is not perfect.
Bryant McGill
Peace may be hard to achieve, but is possible with small yet essential steps that are guided by courage and sufficient commitment.
Widad Akreyi
Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises--War and Shopping--simply will not work.
Arundhati Roy
Jesus of Nazareth always comes asking disciples to follow him--not merely "accept him," not merely "believe in him," not merely "worship him," but to follow him: one either follows Christ, or one does not. There is no compartmentalization of the faith, no realm, no sphere, no business, no politic in which the lordship of Christ will be excluded. We either make him Lord of all lords, or we deny him as Lord of any.
Lee Camp
I've always said, stuff the engagement ring! Just build me a really big library.
Emma Watson
Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
Elie Wiesel
To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts four conditions are indispensable:1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two...2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there...
Jane Jacobs
The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are:You have no right to defy me or leave me. Your life is in my hands.Women are evil and have to be kept terrorized to prevent that evil from coming forth.I would rather die than accept your right to independence.The children are one of the best tools I can use to make you fearful.Seeing you terrified is exciting and satisfying.
Lundy Bancroft
You are responsible for doing what good you can with what you have, and any good is better than none.
Bryant McGill
As long as we see abusers as victims, or as out-of-control monsters, they will continue getting away with ruining lives. If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation.
Lundy Bancroft
To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.
Rebecca Solnit
There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular – a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.
Shane Claiborne
Far from checking the spread of immorality, repression has always extended and deepended it. Thus it is futile to oppose it by rigorous legislation which trespasses on individual liberty.
Daniel Guérin
One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.
Simone Weil
Do not despair. Have faith. It is going to work out and you will be delivered.
Bryant McGill
I want to be a Renaissance Woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I just want to do everything.
Emma Watson
After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
Nelson Mandela
...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
Tim Wise
We can change the world one thought at a time, one child at a time, one family at a time, one community at a time, one city, one state and one country at a time.
Bryant McGill
The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it.
Lierre Keith
The joy and smile of even one child is worth more than the prancing intellects of a thousand men, for we are, that we might have joy, and be free.
Bryant McGill
This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)
Audre Lorde
When feminists create “safe spaces” for adult women...I seriously question why any woman would identify as a feminist. Feminists literally treat adult women like three year olds. How does this empower you to make smart choices about your life? How does this embolden you to go after what you want?....If feminists followed the dictionary, they wouldn’t fear #WomenAgainstFeminism and work so desperately to exclude them from the conversation about gender and equality. They would engage in debate and offer evidence....But they don’t. They file false reports, claim abuse and harassment where none took place and ultimately, expose the heart of fascist, intolerant, hateful darkness at the core of feminism.
Janet Bloomfield
No one can set your level of worthiness except you.
Bryant McGill