Activism Quotes - Page 5

And to those who would choose the safety of inaction over the danger of taking a stand, I have this to say:You bloody cowards. May you have the world that you deserve.

We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer.Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.

The state of interbeing is a vulnerable state. It is the vulnerability of the naive altruist, of the trusting lover, of the unguarded sharer. To enter it, one must leave behind the seeming shelter of a control-based life, protected by walls of cynicism, judgment, and blame.

If collapse is anything, it is a planetary immersion in the maelstrom ofparadox. Unless we understand and honor paradox, we will end up, like all ofthe mainstream media on earth, asking all of the wrong questions.

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.

An educator should consider that he has failed in his job if he has not succeeded in instilling some trace of a divine dissatisfaction with our miserable social environment.

Love and Hate are two of the most used, abused, and misused words of mankind.

You cannot change people but you can change the system so that people are not pushed into doing evil things.

So I think that a protest,' she went on, 'like a work of dance or a work of music, is something done, at least in part, by the protestor for the protestor.'She saw I was about to interrupt so said, 'One more minute. Let me explain. Of course one hopes and plans for impact, for audience, for change, for efficacy. But, like dance, like music, a protest can be a religious ritual too, one that needn't be derisively looked down upon as magical thinking, but a spiritual act where the act itself is the goal. And that act may on some level be co-opted, but in the subjective world of the protestor it is a way, in itself, to be. Even in solipsism, the subject can be moral. You can call it hokum if you wish, but for the protestor, the protest makes a moral world in which she can abide.

You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

The price of conviction has never been cheap, but it will always be worth it.

Is it too much to ask, to live in a world where our human gifts go toward the benefit of all? Where our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people?

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos.

Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied - they don't after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else.

Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing.

...she was something more- a force, a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which kept me from whirling off into some unknown which I dared not face. It was a most painful position for at the same time Mary reminded me constantly that something was expected of me, some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement;...

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Is not the true respect and worship of God the exercising of our power in such a way that we are also respected?

We are not at the bargaining table in agreement to end abuse to our world. We are on the battlefield deciding everyday if we will let this world die or live, by how we contribute to its treatment.

To retain our dignity, we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost

Activists have not been passive. For decades, we have tried every tactic to shift the course of our governments. We have voted, written editorials and manifestos, donated money, held signs, protests in marches, blocked streets, shared links, signed petitions, held workshops, knitted scarves, learn to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed vandalism, launched legal challenges against pipelines . . . and occupied the financial districts. All this has been for naught. A new approach to activism and a new kind of protest are desperately needed.

I would like to say to the men and women of the generations which will come after us: you will look back at us with astonishment. You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little, at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take. At the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive. At the great truths staring us in the face which we failed to see, at the great truths we grasped at but could not get our fingers quite 'round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little. But what you will never know that it was how we were thinking of you and for you that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little that we have done. That it was in the thought of your larger realization and fuller life that we have found consolation for the futilities of our own. All I aspire to be and was not, comforts me.

The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos. - Muzwot

While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.

During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

History has seen many who claim to be deliverer and saviour of the people. They might come with force and violence and parade their might and splendour as conquerors. The pharaohs of Egypt, Sennacherib king of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Darius of Persia, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Napoleon, Clive of India, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin. The story and scene is always the same. They claim to deliver the people from bondage and to establish justice, freedom and peace. They come in might, riding in splendour, dragging prisoners.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

Don't wait for a better world. Start now to create a world of harmony and peace. It is up to you, and it always has been. You may even find the solution at the end of your fork.

I have always preferred the contemplative to the active life. I prefer the freedom to see matters from several viewpoints, to appreciate ironies, and indeed to change my opinion as I learn something new. To be politically active means to surrender this freedom. I say nothing against activism for others. It is only through the committed that necessary changes come. But each to his own path. [A Cautious Case for Socialism, Dissent Magazine, 1978]

Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.

To engage in activism that envisions alternatives ways of organizing society and alternative ways of being is to risk membership in society, a sense of belonging, however partial it may be. Activism can make us vulnerable because it is so obviously about wanting something beyond what is, and to have a political desire often is construed as wanting too much.

Where there is power, there is resistance.

I wonder sometimes what would happen if victory was imagined not just as the elimination of evil but the establishment of good...

I believe the era of the militant lady is back.

It is the cry of the separate self, ‘What about me?’ As long as we keep acting from that place, it doesn’t matter who wins the war against (what they see as) evil. The world will not deviate from its death-spiral.

It is important for women to do something about what they see.

This is the world as it is. This is where you start.

Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.

Your politics are so far right,They're wrong.

All struggles against oppression in the modern woeld begin by redefining what had previously been consideered private, non-public and non-political issues as matters of public concern, as issues of justice, as sites of power.

Tensurrealism creates actual and non-compromised reality, jamboree, fervor, fascination, poetics of an active enthusiasm, interludium, lyrical practice, active happiness.

Anarchy has the flexibility to overcome many of the traditional problems of activism by focusing on revolution not as another cause but as a philosophy of living. This philosophy is as concrete as a brick being thrown through a window or flowers growing in the garden. By making our daily lives revolutionary, we destroy the artificial separation between activism and everyday life. Why settle for comrades and fellow activists when we can have friends and lovers?

Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.

[I]t takes so little effort and money to get rid of malaria, to bring in clean water, to give people a chance at an education. When you don't have hope, that's when people start to do weird, horrible, violent things. That's at the bottom of it. It's just a question of prioritizing. The funds are t

Maybe the same essential download was also being delivered to other people—a massive, compassionate battalion of us—at the same time.

The 1970s-80s social movement called U.S. third world feminism functioned as a central locus of possibility, an insurgent social movement that shattered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct site where truth can be represented. Indeed, without making this kind of metamove, any 'liberation' or social movement eventually becomes destined to repeat the oppressive authoritarianism from which it is attempting to free itself, and become trapped inside a drive for truth that ends only in producing its own brand of dominations. What U.S. third world feminism thus demanded was a new subjectivity, a political revision that denied any one ideology as the final answer, while instead positing a tactical subjectivity with the capactiy to de- and recenter, given the forms of power to be moved. These dynamics are what were required in the shift from enacting a hegemonic oppositional theory and practice to engaging in the differential form of social movement, as performed by U.S. feminists of color during the post-World War II period of great social transformation. p. 58-59.

There is a stereotype that vegans talk about being vegan all the time. The irony is, once people find out I’m vegan, I quickly become their confessor, counselor, and sounding board.

I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the subtleties of sin and the persistence of evil, we would soon be living in moral anarchy and political chaos if there were no provision for justice.

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.

We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.

Activism” is not just what we see on the streets or on the Internet or in the news; sometimes, “activism” is the simple act of doggedly, determinedly surviving.

We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.

Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.

The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual that ultimately makes the difference—by offeringliving proof.

The physical threat posed by climate change represents a crisis that is not only material but also profoundly spiritual at its core because it challenges us to think seriously about the future of the human race and what it means to be a human being.

I was born for this moment in Earth's history and if you believe you are a lightworker, so were you.

There is no one story that will replace the American dream, but storieslike this one—and there are thousands—can inform the myth or mythswe create for building and preserving the next culture. In order to do so,however, we must recognize that we cannot live without myth, for it is anessential part of our humanity. If we attempt to do so—given the fact thatsomething in us needs myth—wewill only create more myths that echothe American dream—with themes of heroism, greed, entitlement, narcissism,exploitation, exceptionalism, and myriad abuses of power. How we prepare for and navigate collapse will provide the raw materials for the myths we make and will live by in a postindustrial world.