Quotes by Activists - Page 80

We who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundations of our way of life; of our civilization - a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds.
Bryant McGill
If the system were designed to protect adoptees, why do so many have to fight for their rights?
DaShanne Stokes
I have been dwelling upon downtowns. This is not because mixtures of primary uses are unneeded elsewhere in cities. On the contrary they are needed, and the success of mixtures downtown (on in the most intensive portions of cities, whatever they are called) is related to the mixture possible in other part of cities.
Jane Jacobs
It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. These were men and women of science, and science had no room for racism.
Nelson Mandela
I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and
Susan Sarandon
The unseen essential awaits your enlightened heart's ascension to love.
Bryant McGill
When you blame others, you are affirming that you have no power, and your existence is only a reaction to the power of others.
Bryant McGill
In order to be effective, be responsive. In order to be responsive, listen.
Sharon Weil
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi
She asked me could I read and write. I told her, "Of course, and I can talk too.
Sister Souljah
It speaks volumes when people who are discriminated against go on to discriminate against others.
DaShanne Stokes
When the storm rips you to pieces, you have to decide how to put yourself back together again.
Bryant McGill
Love is a word, another kind of open.As the diamond comesinto a knot of flameI am Blackbecause I come from the earth's insidetake my word for jewelin the open light.
Audre Lorde
We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration and then 350 million under strong international pressure)...but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish
Rebecca Solnit
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Being yourself in a world which wants you to be someone else is the highest possible attainment.
Bryant McGill
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
Earning money from, and supporting, a system that keeps these people in poverty in the first place and then gives them some of the profits in the form of "strings-attached" aid or World Bank and IMF loans is no more ridiculous than Shell or Esso giving Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth £10,000 to help clear up the destruction that they inevitably cause. Would it not be better not to cause the destruction in the first place?
Mark Boyle
You are the grand estate and administrator of — now.
Bryant McGill
The ultimate form of attraction is to be what you want to attract.
Bryant McGill
Forgiveness can help you to be sane.
Bryant McGill
Your attitudes are slowly shaping you at all times and calling your deepest truths to the surface of your reality.
Bryant McGill
In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet.In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
Alan Paton
A world constructed from the familiar is the world in which there's nothing to learn.
Eli Pariser
A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners- calling for less violent conditions, an end to state sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of prison in our future?
Angela Y. Davis
Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.
Toni Cade Bambara
Maybe you never considered yourself a bully, a batterer or an abuser before, but maybe you are — to yourself.
Bryant McGill
Your strength is beyond your own imagination.
Bryant McGill
And you never even reported it. You should have reported it. I could have took fingerprints. I'd love to lock up them skinheads.""What I'm reporting is the gun, my Sig Sauer." Dave said. "Hetzel will have it. I want it back.""What did it cost you?" Rose said."That's not the point," Dave said. "It's the only gun I ever owned. I'm against guns. They give too many people power who have no right to it. Guns cancel out intelligence, reason, decency, civility, and put terror in their place. I got along without a gun most of my working life. But a man can't buck the odds forever. About five years back I bought the Sig Sauer. I'm used to it. And I don't know that I'm morally prepared to buy another one.
Joseph Hansen
There is a way to flow and cooperate with universal laws which can be beautiful and kind.
Bryant McGill
No matter how deeply you come to know a place, you can keep coming back to know it more.
Rebecca Solnit
I lived through this horror, and no one can tell me I have to stay quiet."I have been silenced long enough, and I will not allow that family to silence me again. I will continue to speak out and make sure my voice is heard.
Erin Merryn
First, people should open their eyes to see structural sin, which is the very existence of a First and Third World. As long as there's a First World, there won't be peace because there won't be justice or sharing. (Pedro Casaldaliga, p. 243)
Mev Puleo
IT’S ALL CLEARISIS INVADES YOUR SPHEREYET NO ONE IMAGINES YOUR FEARBUT DON'T WORRYTAUSSI MELEK IS HERERESTORING LIVES NEAR
Widad Akreyi
Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.
Russell Brand
I made a mistake today I made a mistake yesterday. I think it's ... very important to ignore the negative.
Jerry Rubin
In a gentle way, you can shake the world
Mahatma Gandhi
History belongs to the intercessors - those who believe and pray the future into being.
Walter Wink
Because of our interconnectedness we all know that extreme poverty and exclusionary practices are violations against the basic dignity of people.
Bryant McGill
As long as we don't cut off our hearts, the inner workings of the universe illuminate before us.
Rivera Sun
In a fair and just society you can't create laws based on how you feel at the worst moment in your life.
Norris Henderson
this is the 21st century and we need to redefine r/evolution. this planet needs a people’s r/evolution. a humanist r/evolution. r/evolution is not about bloodshed or about going to the mountains and fighting. we will fight if we are forced to but the fundamental goal of r/evolution must be peace.we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit. the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves. we have got to make this world user friendly. user friendly.are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger. to sacrifice to end colonialism. to end neo-colonialism. to end racism. to end sexism.r/evolution means the end of exploitation. r/evolution means respecting people from other cultures. r/evolution is creative.r/evolution means treating your mate as a friend and an equal. r/evolution is sexy.r/evolution means respecting and learning from your children. r/evolution is beautiful.r/evolution means protecting the people. the plants. the animals. the air. the water. r/evolution means saving this planet.r/evolution is love.
Assata Shakur
The mountain of despair has dwindled, and the stone of hope has size and shape, and can be fondled by the eyes and by the hand. But freedom has always been an elusive tease, and in the very act of grabbing for it one can become shackled.
Alice Walker
Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.
Helen Keller
Having contentment and gratitude in the present moment is the surest way to achieve success.
Bryant McGill
Bigotry that is known and visible is bigotry that can be challenged.
DaShanne Stokes
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen Keller
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
James Baldwin
Who can see twenty-five years into the future?” she had asked. “Your guess is as good as theirs. Confidence is everything.
John Perkins
Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James Baldwin
The arbitrary character of patriarchal ascriptions of temperament and role has little effect upon their power over us. Nor do the mutually exclusive, contradictory, and polar qualities of the categories “masculine” and “feminine” imposed upon human personality give rise to sufficiently serious question among us. Under their aegis each personality becomes little more, and often less than half, of its human potential. Politically, the fact that each group exhibits a circumscribed but complementary personality and range of activity is of secondary importance to the fact that each represents a status or power division. In the matter of conformity patriarchy is a governing ideology without peer; it is probably that no other system has ever exercised such a complete control over its subjects.
Kate Millett
We must seek together to address the good aspirations of people everywhere, for we are bound together through great commonality.
Bryant McGill
To be successful you have to be dumb enough to think you can change the world and smart enough to know how.
Clint Borgen
At the end of the day, feminism is not about what choice you make, it's about having the ability to make a choice.
Jennifer Baumgardner
Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism.
Dan Barker
Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs though it's intimate and psychological-resistant to generalization a mystery of the individual soul.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Freedom is not an abstaction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more is not enough either. Having less, being less, empoverished in freedom and rights, women then invariably have less self-respect: less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life.
Andrea Dworkin
For the vile human pigs in life; the sloppy, disheveled, uncaring dregs, the ungrateful, and especially for the vicious, negative emotional peasants — there will only continue to be the hard and painful lessons you so desperately need. The invisible hand will hold you in your wretched place until your last breath — unless you evolve. If you are cruel and ignorant the invisible fist will pound you into oblivion until you submit, humble yourself and soften your hard heart.
Bryant McGill
The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.
Helen Keller