Quotes by Activists - Page 85

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
Mahatma Gandhi
The world, as it is, is not a permanent reality, but is a temporary product of our choices as creators.
Bryant McGill
When I got to college, the fake ID thing wasn't that important, since pretty much everyone could get away with drinking in New Orleans. But the drugs, well, that was a different story altogether, because drugs are every bit as illegal in New Orleans as anywhere else--at least, if you're black and poor, and have the misfortune of doing your drugs somewhere other than the dorms at Tulane University. But if you are lucky enough to be living at Tulane, which is a pretty white place, especially contrasted with the city where it's located, which is 65 percent black, then you are absolutely set.
Tim Wise
I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.
Marge Piercy
Create and maintain a beautiful environment and surroundings in which to live.
Bryant McGill
My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.
Erin Merryn
If it ran, a Bean would eat it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.
Carolyn Chute
Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said.
Shane Claiborne
Be an asset in the lives of others. Put people before things and live from your heart.
Bryant McGill
We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls.We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.
Maya Angelou
Empathy is a big part of Sparkleponies, because it’s also my belief (as a history and political science major) that societies that don’t practice rational empathy inevitably collapse – either by fomenting conflict from within by oppressing a segment/s of their populace, or seeking conflict from without by taking from others and eventually getting into a fight they can’t win.
Chris Kluwe
The lack of stringent laws and the inefficient prosecution ofperpetrators have made it increasingly difficult for victims and theirfamilies to get the justice they deserve.
Oche Otorkpa
Yes I am aware of the rules. Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.That gives my soul its melodies.
Malebo Sephodi
Prejudice plunges you into a world of fear and hate. That's no way to live.
DaShanne Stokes
It is a great shock at the age of 5 or 6 to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
James Baldwin
I spent the beginning of my focus on activism by doing what most everyone else was doing; blaming other people and institutions. Don’t like the war? Let’s blame the president, congress, or lobbyists. Don’t like ecological disregard? Let’s blame this or that corrupt corporation or some regulatory body for poor performance. Don’t like being poor and socially immobile? Let’s blame government coercion and interference in this free market utopia everyone keeps talking about.The sobering truth of the matter is that the only thing to blame is the dynamic, causal unfolding of system expression itself on the cultural level. In other words, none of us create or do anything in isolation – it’s impossible. We are system-bound both physically and psychologically; a continuum. Therefore our view of causality with respect to societal change can only be truly productive if we seek and source the most relevant sociological influences we can and begin to alter those effects from the root causes.
Peter Joseph
The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.
Christina Enevoldsen
The greatest self is a peaceful smile, that always sees the world smiling back.
Bryant McGill
An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.
Bryant McGill
Education about gender and peace is important. Educational strategies to promote peace must consider all relations of dominance.
Widad Akreyi
Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion.
Toni Cade Bambara
One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.
Lundy Bancroft
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Maya Angelou
Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.
Margaret Sanger
The Mommy Wars, as they stand today, serve as an effective check on the ambitions of the American mother. The phenomenon keeps women in a perpetual state of guilt, shame and inadequacy, and does so without involving anyone but wealthy white women.
Shannon Drury
I hear the singing of the lives of women. The clear mystery, the offering, and the pride.
Muriel Rukeyser
She took my papers, the papers that had followed me from the Khobar police station to jail, and pointed at a place where I was supposed to sign. On the paper there was a line for charges. In the blank space, someone had written “driving while female.
Manal Al-Sharif
Racism breeds racism in reverse.
Mary Brave Bird
People often call fighting racism being 'PC' when they don't want to confront their own prejudice
DaShanne Stokes
Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.
Helen Keller
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
Alice Walker
The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal.
Maajid Nawaz
Building a museum case and filling it with types of mussels is one way of knowing mussels; but on the shore, a mussel leads to a crab or a curious stone, which leads to another thing and eventually leads back to mussels, which is another and perhaps a more far-reaching way to know mussels. The sea that always seems like a metaphor, but one that is always moving, cannot be fixed, like a heart that is a like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something altogether different and like everything at once. One thing leads to another, and this is the treasure that always runs through your fingers and never runs out.
Rebecca Solnit
This is your life and you have the right and responsibility to make good decisions for yourself.
Bryant McGill
I talk to children like adults and to adults like children.
Bryant McGill
What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.
Maya Angelou
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Maya Angelou
The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.
Andrea Dworkin
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Adoption isn't just a childhood experience, it's a life-long experience.
DaShanne Stokes
When you're dealing with frauds and liars, listen more to what they don't say than what they do.
DaShanne Stokes
America is a place of opportunity. It’s people-friendly! Very much so, compared to the Muslim countries in the world. People looking for better lives flock to America because we as a society do not mutilate young girls' genitals, do not cut off people’s hands for stealing. We do not stone people to death for committing adultery. We do not rape women and men for speaking up against our government. We do not forbid people to go to school and to learn because of their gender. We assume people are innocent until proven guilty. We give people the freedom to criticize our government and even burn our flag as an expression of speech. This is but a partial list of why America is superior in culture and values to many other countries in the world. This type of culture also thrives in Israel, the only Western-style nation in the Middle East, one that Arabs despise, feel threatened by, and vow to destroy.
Brigitte Gabriel
When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.
Masha Gessen
Let go of everything. That is how you get everything.
Bryant McGill
The art of surrender is the art of getting out of the way of your own growth.
Bryant McGill
If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.
Alice Walker
The abusive man’s high entitlement leads him to have unfair and unreasonable expectations, so that the relationship revolves around his demands. His attitude is: “You owe me.” For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him, even if it means that her own needs—or her children’s—get neglected. You can pour all your energy into keeping your partner content, but if he has this mind-set, he’ll never be satisfied for long. And he will keep feeling that you are controlling him, because he doesn’t believe that you should set any limits on his conduct or insist that he meet his responsibilities.
Lundy Bancroft
We are living in a very complex society. It puts me in a complex frame of thinking.
Ai Weiwei
With commitment and vision, it is possible to build a bridge between potential partners and communities whose work is of relevance to peace-building initiatives.
Widad Akreyi
And It was said to me: "embrace the glorious mess you are". How easy it is to see darkness in the winter shedding and not see that even in its gloominess lies great beauty. That even in our great struggles - lies within a great victory. How then does the Spring green come about without the fertilisation of the Winter brown? Isn't it the very brown that gives way and life to the green we await to goggle in awe. There is power and sheer beauty in your mess. A true triumphing chaos that renders sweet melodic honey to your journey. So again it was whispered to me "embrace the glorious mess that you are
Malebo Sephodi
You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.
Jim Wallis
Your lowest moment and life can be your best if you survive it and learn from it
Brian Cuban
Violence is already active here; it is built into the very structure od the existing society. If we seek a world in which men do the least possible violence to each other (which is to state just the negative of it), then we are committed not simply to try to avoid violence ourselves, but to try to destroy patterns of violence which already exist.
Barbara Deming
When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression....I most certainly don't see myself as a victim.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
He wanted to go home and lock his door and sleep. He was tired of the troubles of real people. He wanted to get back to the people he was inventing, whose troubles he could bear.
James Baldwin
In nude protests, the very same body that is objectified and subjected to endless scrutiny and policing is used to reclaim power.
Malebo Sephodi
Every good thing begins with one positive thought.
Bryant McGill
It seemed that there was no time to catch up with all the things that were happening. I would be at the construction workers' demonstration one day and then marching with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with everything - the rent strikes, the sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give active support in some way. The more active i became, the more i liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole ...My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of the struggle and i wanted to dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me.
Assata Shakur
If I want my people to be free, Americans have to be free.
Russell Means