Quotes by Activists - Page 35

If you come as softlyAs wind within the treesYou may hear what I hearSee what sorrow sees.If you come as lightlyAs threading dewI will take you gladlyNor ask more of you.You may sit beside meSilent as a breathOnly those who stay deadShall remember death.And if you come I will be silentNor speak harsh words to you.I will not ask you why, now.Or how, or what you do.We shall sit here, softlyBeneath two different yearsAnd the rich earth between usShall drink our tears.
Audre Lorde
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
Maya Angelou
Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
Rebecca Solnit
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela
I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was “it”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.
Elie Wiesel
We are all students of the world; frail embodied consciousnesses struggling to understand, and be a meaningful part of this great, mysterious gift of life.
Bryant McGill
I believed I was too sensitive and weak. To “prove” I wasn’t a victim anymore, I moved closer to painful experiences rather than away from them. Remaining in harm’s way and exposing myself to more pain kept me in the victim role rather than moving me out of it.
Christina Enevoldsen
Only in the present is your mind free to do what it does best — solve problems.
Bryant McGill
The flow of spiritual connectedness and oneness with life will dwell in you if your heart and mind is open and innocent.
Bryant McGill
There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.
Helen Keller
If this is a smart world then I want to be stupid.
Bryant McGill
I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea.
James Baldwin
My faceless neighbor spoke up:“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.”I exploded:“What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
Elie Wiesel
The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn't just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an ecological serial killer, and it's long past time for us to recognize the pattern.
Aric McBay
An institution rooted in slavery can never set us free.
DaShanne Stokes
Even within perfection, there are flaws. These flaws carry an unattainable beauty, which is indifferent to the human nature.
Nocturnus Libertus
Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
James Baldwin
Many rabble-rousers for libertarianism, liberty and freedom are unwitting pawns of controllers they have never even considered.
Bryant McGill
An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said.An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
I hear the singing of the lives of women. The clear mystery the offering the pride.
Muriel Rukeyser
If you'd combat bigotry, use honest language and call things out for what they really are.
DaShanne Stokes
Please don't waste-away in front of a TV waiting to win a lottery during the precious few hours you are not imprisoned in corporate shackles.
Bryant McGill
Brian organised for the body to be flown back.
Jolene Tan
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live.
Joan Baez
Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.
Naomi Wolf
Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America.
Bryant McGill
You really can change the world if you care enough.
Marian Wright Edelman
To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.
Rebecca Solnit
One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else—housewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers—would never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.
James Baldwin
If you try to hold people to your standard of conduct you will go mad with disappointment and grief.
Bryant McGill
The church wanted us to give out food to malnourished children, but they didn't want us to question why they were malnourished to begin with.
Elvia Alvarado
God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.
Simone Weil
The idea that women are 'our own worst enemies' forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted too.
Gloria Steinem
The worst bullies you will ever encounter in your life are your own thoughts.
Bryant H. McGill
The beautiful thing about meditation is that it allows you to access that cool guy or girl inside of you that's waiting to come out. You'll be able to access the part of you that people like to be around. The part of you that feels upbeat about things. That feels like you're moving toward your goals without frustration and anxiety. That feels ecstatic to be alive! The more I meditate, the more I have these moments.
Russell Simmons
Men and women are like right and left hands: it doesn't make sense not to use both.
Jeannette Rankin
All the sugar was in the bottom of the cup.
Julia Ward Howe
It is time for the international community to work for the creation of an independent Kurdistan as they did once for the Jews after the Holocaust. The current war against ISIS, which is perceived by many as World War Three, can be compared to World War Two. After horrible wars, great changes can be brought about for those who have suffered extreme injustice.
Widad Akreyi
The incredibly powerful and enriching lifestyle of seeking beauty is a humble service of love and healing.
Bryant McGill
Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.
Marian Wright Edelman
Yes, for the love of God young women, come along – learn your limits. Or, rather, know society’s limits. How dare you think you have the right to go out wearing whatever you like – how foolish and ignorant of you to expect not to be assaulted, you brazen hussies! What do you think this is? A free country?
Laura Bates
We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.
Jane Jacobs
many efforts on bahalf of of animals will qualitatively improve humans' living conditions as well, which is likely to be the case
Carol J. Adams
Oh, how we could blossom if we didn't have to fight to the death to merely exist!
Bryant McGill
Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.
Emma Watson
Indeed, there is something in this valley, some spirit and some life, and much to talk about in the huts. Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
Alan Paton
Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
Mahatma Gandhi
If you want more then be more. If you want better then be better.
Bryant McGill
With all respect to your religion or world-view — thank God, thank the universe, thank evolutionary processes — the keyword is "thank" — just have some gratitude and be thankful.
Bryant McGill
It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.So while a small number of abusive men do hate women, the great majority exhibit a more subtle—though often quite pervasive—sense of superiority or contempt toward females, and some don’t show any obvious signs of problems with women at all until they are in a serious relationship.
Lundy Bancroft
Privilege doesn't just insulate people from the consequences of their prejudice, it cuts them off from their humanity.
DaShanne Stokes
I believe that we have reached a stage in life in the economic development of Africa where moving forward is perilous, moving backwards is cowardice and standing still is suicidal but we must persevere because winners do not quit and quitter never win.
Patrick L.O. Lumumba
We each begin in innocence. We all become guilty.
Leonard F. Peltier
Part of the problem was that I couldn't seem to get past the fact that I hadn't tried to escape from Kas. Even in France, when he'd left me on my own for several days, I'd carried on working [as a prostitute] and doing all the things he'd told me to d. And although I knew that it was because of the fear he'd so carefully and deliberately instilled in me, I still felt as though I'd somehow colluded in what had happened to me - despite knowing, deep down, that nothing could have been further from the truth.
Sophie Hayes
That day, I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person. The ensuing years have taught me that a kind word, a vote of support is a charitable gift. I can move over and make another place for someone. I can turn my music up if it pleases, or down if it is annoying. I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources.
Maya Angelou
I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.
James Baldwin
They have never put it into words, they cannot; but each absence is a threat. They never felt this way in New York - they moved all over New York. Here each is afraid that one of the others will get into some terrible trouble before he is seen again, and before anyone can help him. It is the spirit of the people, the eyes which endlessly watch them, eyes which never meet their eyes. Something like lust, something like hatred, seems to hover in the air along the country roads, shifting like mist or steam, but always there, gripping the city streets like fog, making every corner a dangerous corner. They spend more of themselves, each day, than they can possibly afford, they are living beyond their means; they drop into bed each evening, exhausted, into an exhausting sleep. And no one can help them. The people who live here know how to do it - so it seems, anyway - but they cannot teach the secret. The secret can be learned only by watching, by emulating the models, by dangerous trial and possibly mortal error.
James Baldwin
I feel that all knowledge should be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I think people who refuse to use other people's knowledge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to share their knowledge with other people are making a great mistake, because we need it all. I don't have any problem about ideas I got from other people. If I find them useful, I'll just ease them right in and make them my own.
Myles Horton
Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.
Russell Brand
The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires respected, to have a 50 percent say in decision making, to live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their children’s rights are somewhat smaller but substantial nonetheless; children can’t have an equal say in decisions because of their limited knowledge and experience, but they do have the right to live free from abuse and fear, to be treated with respect, and to have their voices heard on all issues that concern them.
Lundy Bancroft