Quotes by Activists - Page 30

She was sad and lost and alone in the dark," Cecil said. "She needed somebody to hold her.""And you think she's going to get tired of that?""You did," Cecil said. "You shut me right out.""It was your decision, not mine," Dave said. "You are the dearest thing in life to me. You're bright and funny and gentle and decent and full of life. And I will never get tired of you, and neither will Chrissie. It's not up to her anyway. You're the adult. Tell her the truth -- that it was an act of kindness that got out of hand.""I can't hurt her like that," Cecil said. "It will hurt more the longer you let it go on.
Joseph Hansen
Who you allow into your life, mind and heart are among the most important decisions you will ever make.
Bryant McGill
I feel about my dogs now, and all the dogs I had prior to this, the way I feel about children—they are that important to me. When I have lost a dog I have gone into a mourning period that lasted for months.
Mary Tyler Moore
Drifting with things is a habit it takes almost dying to break.
Marge Piercy
Either greed belongs in a war zone, or it doesn't. You can't unleash it in the name of sparking an economic boom and then be shocked when Halliburton overcharges for everything from towels to gas, when Parsons' sub, sub, sub-contractor builds a police academy where the pipes drip raw sewage on the heads of army cadets and where Blackwater investigates itself and finds it acted honorably. That's just corporations doing what they do and Iraq is a privatized war zone so that's what you get. Build a frontier, you get cowboys and robber barons.
Naomi Klein
A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.
Derrick Jensen
People who are out of control desperately need to observe your healthy boundaries in-play to learn from your example.
Bryant McGill
We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.
Satish Kumar
Men have constructed female sexuality and in so doing have annihilated the chance for sexual intelligence in women. Sexual intelligence cannot live in the shallow, predestined sexuality men have counterfeiteed for women.
Andrea Dworkin
There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should not be allowed to hear too much about these matters. If they learn how much less they are getting than rich children, we are told, this knowledge may induce them to regard themselves as "victims," and such "victim-thinking," it is argued, may then undermine their capacity to profit from whatever opportunities may actually exist. But this is a matter of psychology-or strategy-and not reality. The matter, in any case, is academic since most adolescents in the poorest neighborhoods learn very soon that they are getting less than children in the wealthier school districts. They see suburban schools on television and they see them when they travel for athletic competitions. It is a waste of time to worry whether we should tell them something they could tell to us. About injustice, most poor children in American cannot be fooled.
Jonathan Kozol
In response to my question about how we might rein in the empire, he said, "That's why I'm meeting with you. Only you in the United States can change it. Your government created this problem and your people must solve it. You've got to insist that Washington honor its commitment to democracy, even when deomcratically elected leaders nationalize your corrupting corporations. You must take control of your corporations and your government. The people of the United States have a great deal of power. You need to come to grips with this. There's no alternative. We in Brazil have our hands tied. So do the Venezeulans. And the Nigerians. It's up to you.
John Perkins
People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.
Arundhati Roy
Let the fires of truth burn away your false life and your excuses, fears, blaming, doubts and illusions of insignificance.
Bryant McGill
A disposable society is only fit for disposable people.
Bryant McGill
Cow, goat, chicken, lamb . . . only slaves eat like this,’ Musa said, heaping an impolite amount on to his plate. ‘Our stomachs are graveyards.
Arundhati Roy
Every experience is seen through your mind's eye, so when you change your mind you change your entire world.
Bryant McGill
Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.
Mahatma Gandhi
Same-sex marriage has not created problems for religious institutions religious institutions have created problems for same-sex marriage.
DaShanne Stokes
Children playing while in the background the TV blares with screams, gunfire and rape-murder scenes. It seeps in.
Bryant McGill
I also noticed that humor was even more of a survival tactic here than in most women's groups. As one asked: What did Columbus call primitive? Answer: Equal women.
Gloria Steinem
Justice is always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized. That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so poorly organized. On the other hand, the Evil is cynic, sly and fantastically organized. It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation. And of course it does - under the banners of the most noble ideas.
Vladimir Bukovsky
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.
Audre Lorde
The truth can do years of work in seconds.
Bryant McGill
Seek for illumination of self, and then the world, through the simple, humble, almighty, supreme virtue of love.
Bryant McGill
There are graceful ways of accessing your purpose and success, with time, invitation, gentleness, cooperation and surrender.
Bryant McGill
In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.
Rebecca Solnit
The system wears a mask of civility, yet will quickly reveal its true nature in the form of magnificently-purposed violence when needed.
Bryant McGill
A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about it.
Simone Weil
Support what is good and spit out what is bad. Get off of your knees and reject the role of slave to the culture of violence.
Bryant McGill
Most of your problems exist because your heart is hard and you are being arrogant.
Bryant McGill
True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.
Mahatma Gandhi
In recent decades we have emphasized the value of teaching people 'tolerance.' Tolerance is not only inadequate, it is a negative concept which only alienates society further. Learning to tolerate absolves people of the responsibility of learning to understand different people, accept and appreciate their differences, and progress towards respecting them for who and what they are. It is only when we build acceptance between people that we will rid ourselves of the scourge of prejudice and liberate ourselves from violence.
Arun Gandhi
The moment we confront our fears we are declaring that we are contenders for life, and for love.
Bryant McGill
The world is full of alluring, flashy and thrilling experiences, which are illusionary traps — they are paths to nowhere.
Bryant McGill
The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy....Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.
Phyllis Schlafly
Unleash your mighty words, and with them, recreate a new and more beautiful world for all.
Bryant McGill
If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.
Aron Ra
I will follow anyoneAnd ask everyoneTo stand together as one nationAgainst the killing of innocent citizens
Widad Akreyi
Physical aggression by a man toward his partner is abuse, even if it happens only once.
Lundy Bancroft
Friendship is greater than the colonial and dominating race ideologies of hundreds of years." -"Some of My Best Friends
Luis J. Rodríguez
When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
Betty Friedan
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.
Maya Angelou
There can never be any real freedom on earth as long as people try to exert ownership over the natural resources of the world.
Bryant McGill
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Helen Keller
It's the last great free-for-all robbery of everybody's earth.
Marge Piercy
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi
Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.
Andrea Dworkin
As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.
Muriel Rukeyser
Science may have found a cure for most evils but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller
Impossible is nothing.
Muhammad Ali
You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
Maya Angelou
People who have had little self-reflection live life in a huge reality blind-spot.
Bryant McGill
It is the very thing I thought I could never be that the real me has settled into like a puzzle. Who would have thought I could be me?
Malebo Sephodi
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
Life is simply a collective thought. Didn't you know we made it all up? Don't you know it can be different?
Bryant McGill
Life wants you to know yourself, be yourself and love yourself.
Bryant McGill
Brightly burning passion is the releasing of your essence, your specialness and your gifts to the world.
Bryant McGill
We have a responsibility to disobey and violate unjust rules and laws.
Bryant McGill
Success is a spiritual process, not a worldly one; that is to say it is an internal process, and not external.
Bryant McGill