Quotes by Activists - Page 56

Although a lot can be learned from adversity most of the same lessons can be learned through laughter and joy.
Peter McWilliams
He said that he was sorry but Robert Bey had called and told him i was no longer in the party. I was burnt. I got the Bronx Ministry to put him on the phone and proceeded to call him the unprincipled, arrogant idiot he was... i hate arrogance whether it's white or purple or Black. Some people let power get to their heads... the only great people i have met have been modest and humble. You can't claim that you love people when you don't respect them, and you can't call for political unity unless you practice it in your relationships.
Assata Shakur
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
Maya Angelou
It’s a great city, Paris, a beautiful city––and––it was very good for me.
James Baldwin
An institution rooted in slavery cannot be the voice of our people.
DaShanne Stokes
Painful truth is better than a pleasant lie.
Bryant McGill
The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of these acts, describing them as “crimes of passion.” But what could more thoroughly prove that a man did not love his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children, would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an instant. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse and coercion.
Lundy Bancroft
Religious fundamentalism, magical thinking and self-delusion, have been justifications for some of the most horrific atrocities in human history.
Bryant McGill
An older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment “Thou shall not kill.”But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22–23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies.Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life.
Gloria Steinem
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
Elie Wiesel
Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who elevates you; both are displaying a failure to respect you as a real human being and bode ill.
Lundy Bancroft
In the same way, teenagers imagine dying young because death is more imaginable than the person that all the decisions and burdens of adulthood may make of you.
Rebecca Solnit
Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it—every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging.
Ashton Applewhite
Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or THINK they have) gained.
Arundhati Roy
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou
This life is like a roller-coaster; once you are strapped-in and the ride has started, you aren't getting off.
Bryant McGill
The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James Baldwin
The Church is going to have to recognise that secularisation is not the cause of their decline, it is the result of it.
Keith Porteous Wood
Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.
Nelson Mandela
I have learned not to worry about love but to honor its coming with all my heart.
Alice Walker
I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
But the idea of an Aryan race could never become metaphysically true, despite all the violence unleashed to create it, because there simply is no Aryan race. There is only the idea of it—and the consequences of trying to make it seem real. The male sex is very like that.
John Stoltenberg
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. Dom Helder Camara – one of the great prophets of Christian "Liberation theology".
Dom Helder Camara Archbishop of Recife in Brazil
Healing restores to wholeness that which has been injured or fragmented.
Sharon Weil
Cynicism is one of the terrible obstacles to progress.
Bryant McGill
Understand your power. Live dangerously. Live fearlessly. Cower before no earthly master. Know yourself. Live truthfully. Live freely. Be yourself. Love yourself.
Bryant McGill
As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs.
Grace Lee Boggs
Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.
Walter Wink
I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first a little and badly. Then bit by bit more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.
Audre Lorde
The country has turned its loyal inhabitants into wanderers similar to the survivors of an apocalypse.
Rami Ollaik
In India we're fighting to retain a wilderness that we have. Whereas in the west, it's gone. Every person that's walking down the street is a walking bar code. You can tell where their clothes are from, how much they cost, which designer made which shoe, which shop you bought each item from. Everything is civilized and tagged and valued and numbered and put in it's place. Whereas in India, the wilderness still exists-the unindoctrinated wilderness of the mind, full of untold secrets and wild imaginings.
Arundhati Roy
Almost all sadness comes from thinking about the past, and all worry from thinking about the future — present-mindedness is your only safe haven.
Bryant McGill
It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved.’ I can’t possibly live up to what everyone thinks I am and what everyone’s expectations of me are.
Emma Watson
You are a unique and beautiful expression of the mysterious gift of life and creation.
Bryant McGill
Who you are is shaping your so-called reality. When you change — the world changes with you.
Bryant McGill
Unless institutional power reinforces the hurt and prejudice suffered by a group, it is not oppression. By definition, a person of color cannot be racist, or a woman sexist, because they do not have the institutionalized power to act on their prejudices. Also, by definition, all white people are racist, not just because of the personal attitudes that we usually think of as racist, but because of the privilege white skin brings in our society. Whites cannot say they are not racist because they are born into a society that teaches racism and reinforces white privilege every day even before they can be aware of it. Whites can choose, however, to be active antiracists, which means making a commitment to a lifelong process of learning to recognize racism in themselves and in the institutions they are part of and taking steps to stop it.
Linda Stout
We cannot trust our own minds, traditions and beliefs.
Bryant McGill
Yesterday I felt like shit, so I rode my bike around town and repeatedly grafittied “The revolution is not being televised” in paint pen. It was a “pointless” action, but it nonetheless healed me to do this. It was an act of love for that “hooligan” Arundhati Roy. It was an act of self-love. I don’t expect it to change the world, but on the other hand, I know it will.
Inga Muscio
When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, the Buddha smiles, and the broken chain of history reconnects.
Ziauddin Yousafzai
What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.
Naomi Wolf
If your attitudes are good, then your world will be better.
Bryant McGill
We must let our every act be out of love, and for the greater good of all.
Bryant McGill
It seemed to me, watching, that if you were dextrous enough to gift-wrap an independent-minded amphibian, you could just about manage a condom.
Naomi Wolf
The further you are challenged and threatened, the more your warrior heart will emerge.
Bryant McGill
What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities.Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives.
Leslie Feinberg
Well,’ I said, ‘Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York — ’He was smiling. I stopped.‘What do you feel in New York?’ he asked.‘Perhaps you feel,’ I told him, ‘all the time to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like—many years from now.
James Baldwin
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.
Maya Angelou
The only difference between man and man all the world over is one of degree, and not of kind, even as there is between trees of the same species.Where in is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination?
Mahatma Gandhi
Don't give-up on your greatest masterpiece — you.
Bryant McGill
I was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.
Gloria Steinem
You would not believe what skill, power and ability your total intelligence possesses until you are in desperate need.
Bryant McGill
Racism is dead only to those who've closed their eyes and ears to the whole world around them.
DaShanne Stokes
Every moment you are open, as a humble student, you are surrounded with infinite possibilities of choice.
Bryant McGill
I think music has the ability to inspire people and to change hearts, and the heart has the power to change the mind, and the mind has the power to change the world.
Serj Tankian
To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
Kevin Alfred Strom
One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola.
Derrick Jensen
Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other's differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.
Leslie Feinberg
There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare. I don’t question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.
Lundy Bancroft
America, and all it had once stood for--all he had fought for--was dying...on life support, and counting.
Patricia Cori
A friend asked, "If increased awareness means less happiness, why bother?" No answer.
Derrick Jensen