Quotes by Activists - Page 58

Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Naomi Wolf
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela
Many of the great humanitarian and environmental campaigns of our time have been to make the unknown real, the invisible visible, to bring the faraway near, so that the suffering of sweatshop workers, torture victims, beaten children, even the destruction of other species and remote places, impinges on the imagination and perhaps prompts you to act.
Rebecca Solnit
The master action to move forward, is a form of inaction; being still and quiet.
Bryant McGill
When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being, I cried, ‘it is good to be alive!’ I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain silence would impose dumbness upon me henceforth! The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there was hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?
Helen Keller
The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries!
Alice Walker
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Mahatma Gandhi
I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same.
Helen Keller
[B]eauty is one of the things that make you cry and so maybe beauty is always tied up in tears.
Rebecca Solnit
We can't be brave without fear.
Muhammad Ali
People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, 'Well, are you a Republican or an American?' The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, 'I don't have a knowledge that God exists.' The atheist says, 'I don't have a belief that God exists.' You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.
Dan Barker
There is no problem that greater consciousness and compassion, enjoined with positive resolve of will cannot solve.
Bryant McGill
Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.
Mahatma Gandhi
Let’s be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father’s behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches’ home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that “it ain’t time to worry yet.” We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they’ll say, “Huh. Guess it’s not time to worry yet.
Glennon Doyle Melton
Fire destroys that which feeds it.
Simone Weil
Inside of a ring or out ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.
Muhammad Ali
States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.
Raif Badawi
If you want relief from pain just strive to touch more of every part of life.
Bryant McGill
...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed
Kat Banyard
I have to find a place to hideAn island in the seaSurrounded by a racing tideWhere I can live with me
Laurie Matthew
To be sure, I had, and have, spent the better part of my post-college life growing up in the public eye, with my shameful warts, big and ugly, looming there for the world to see; and it has been a mighty battle trying to be a man, a Black man, a human being, a responsible and consistent human being, as I have interfaced with my past and with my personal demons, with friends and lovers, with enemies and haters. As Tupac Shakur once famously said to me, “There is no placed called careful.” On the one hand, Tupac was right: There is not much room for error in America if you are a Black male in a society ostensibly bent on profiling your every move, eager to capitalize on your falling into this or that trap, particularly keen to swoop down on your self-inflicted mishaps. But by the same token, Tupac was wrong: There can be a place called careful, once one becomes aware of the world one lives in, its potential, its limitations, and if one is willing to struggle to create a new model, some new and alternative space outside and away from the larger universe, where one can be free enough to comprehend that even if the world seems aligned against you, you do not have to give the world the rope to hang you with.
Kevin Powell
I think the biggest disservice to the American people was the denial by the networks to air video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, or the many other hostages that were beheaded in Iraq. We as a society need to see the type of enemy we are fighting. People have been so sheltered in this country that they have not paid attention to what has been going on for the last twenty-some years. And today, even after the attack of September 11, people still cannot fathom that this type of barbarity could happen here.
Brigitte Gabriel
We must understand the essence of our faith to be something other than a list of opinions, propositions, or statements that our group holds but cannot prove. (p. 22)
Brian D. McLaren
Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time and bear fruit throughout eternity.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.
The Invisible Committee
On Stripping Bark from Myself(for Jane, who said trees die from it)Because women are expected to keep silent abouttheir close escapes I will not keep silentand if I am destroyed (naked tree!) someone willpleasemark the spotwhere I fall and know I could not livesilent in my own lieshearing their 'how nice she is!'whose adoration of the retouched imageI so despise.No. I am finished with livingfor what my mother believesfor what my brother and father defendfor what my lover elevatesfor what my sister, blushing, denies or rushesto embrace.I find my ownsmall persona standing selfagainst the worldan equality of willsI finally understand.Besides:My struggle was always againstan inner darkness: I carry within myselfthe only known keysto my death – to unlock life, or close it shutforever. A woman who loves wood grains, the coloryellowand the sun, I am happy to fightall outside murderersas I see I must.
Alice Walker
Evil's when you push your agenda over someone else's. When you assert your beliefs over somebody's contrary beliefs. That's evil.
David Kitson
There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.
James Baldwin
There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
Nelson Mandela
The essential respect is the one in your own heart for yourself.
Bryant McGill
Maybe the word forgive points in the wrong direction, since it's something you mostly give yourself, not anyone else: you put down the ugly weight of old suffering, untie yourself from the awful, and walk away from it.
Rebecca Solnit
Protesting is never a disturbance of the peace. Corruption, injustice, war and intimidation are disturbances of the peace.
Bryant McGill
Marxism teaches that exploitation and degradation somehow produce resistance and revolution. It's been hard to say why. What I've learned from women's experience with sexuality is that exploitation and degradation produce grateful complicity in exchange for survival. They produce self-loathing to the point of extinction of self, and it is respect for self that makes resistance conceivable.
Catharine A. MacKinnon
The authentic human has the might of compassion and the creative power to do any manner of good.
Bryant McGill
It's just going to add to him thinking that I am a crazy, wanky, greenie, hybriddriving hippie," I complained."Has he seen your bomb of a car?" Fran asked in disbelief. "Greenpeace arranges a protest every time it leaves your driveway.
Sean Kennedy
The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic—a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall.
James Baldwin
The internet has become a political space. I think that is one of the most important developments in the past decade.
Julian Assange
Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.
Assata Shakur
When someone is attacking you, they are coming to you for advice.
Bryant McGill
Many an injustice is presented as solution and gift.
Bryant McGill
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.
Helen Keller
If we can’t feel into the heart of grief, we can’t truly move on to experience hope and joy. We can’t be present to what is now, and what is next, because we are bound by the loss and sorrow that holds us to the past. Grief has to flow. It has to be carried, not just by you, but by the others with you, by your community, until it transforms to the next rightful calling of your heart to action.
Sharon Weil
Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while "beauty" is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, "beauty" is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is an accident of nature, a fickle consensus of mass perception, a peculiar coincidence--but it is not a moral act. From the "beauties" in male culture, women learn a bitter amoral lesson--that the moral lessons of their culture exclude them.
Naomi Wolf
If you relax your mind, it can begin working for you.
Bryant McGill
They knew that no one heard, that bloodless people cannot be made to bleed. So they blew what everyone had heard before, they reassured everyone that nothing terrible was happening.
James Baldwin
That made clear to me the continuum that stretches from minor social minor to violent silencing and violent death (and I think we would understand misogyny and violence against women even better if we looked at the abuse of power as a whole rather than treating domestic violence separately from rape and murder and harrassment and intimidation, online at home and in the workplace and in the streets; seen together, the pattern is clear). Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.
Rebecca Solnit
What we do to others, we do to ourselves..
Bryant McGill
Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
Muhammad Ali
Gender is like a Rubik’s Cube with one hundred squares per side, and every time you twist it to take a look at another angle, you make it that much harder a puzzle to solve.
Sam Killermann
You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.
Mahatma Gandhi
The gift is you.
John Denver
Giving is the master key to success, in all applications of human life.
Bryant McGill
You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for.
Maya Angelou
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.")
Maya Angelou
Who controls the words controls your thoughts.
Heather Marsh
If you want more from life — start by counting your blessings instead of counting your losses, deficits and wants.
Bryant McGill
You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.
Mahatma Gandhi
Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds.
William Sloane Coffin Jr.
Life has ... taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself but to leave the result to God.
Alan Paton
When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free.
Bryant McGill