Quotes by Activists - Page 2

A president who has incited violence inspires citizens towards hate and violence.

DaShanne Stokes

In those meetings, I learned that even economic diagrams needn’t be linear. Ours was a nest of concentric circles, and an enterprise was measured by its value to each circle, from the individual and family to the community and environment. I realized that Rebecca and her colleagues were trying to do nothing less than transform the System of National Accounts, the statistical framework here and in most countries for measuring economic activity. For instance, the value of a tree depends on its estimated value or sale price, but if it is sold and cut down, there is no accounting on the debit side of the ledger for loss of oxygen, seeding of other trees, or value to the community or the environment. This group was inventing a new way of measuring profit and loss. By the end of our days together, I understood economics in a whole new way. A balance sheet really could be about balance.

Gloria Steinem

As far back as I can remember, there has always been a place to which I belonged with a certainty that nothing has been able to take from me. When I say place, that means less a geographical locality and more a group of people with whom I am connected and to whom I belong.

Sindiwe Magona

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.

Nikki Giovanni

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

Audre Lorde

Islam is not unusual in having a tradition of martyrs. What is unique to Islam is the tradition of murderous martyrdom, in which the individual martyr simultaneously commits suicide and kills others for religious reasons.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Some people have sex by putting fishhooks in each other. Couple this act with a simple understanding of the basic function of all living creatures to expand and contract. Now, try that with fishhooks.

Sarah Schulman

Having had nothing, I will not settle for crumbs.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.

Sarah Schulman

Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.

Naomi Klein

Of course women's walking is often construed as performance rather than transport, with the implication that women walk not to see but to be seen, not for their own experience but for that of a male audience, which means that they are asking for whatever attention they receive.

Rebecca Solnit

Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there.

Gloria Steinem

When I act, I act on behalf of who or what I love. Even when I have to fight against something, it is because of what I value and love.

Sharon Weil

A third-grader when WWII started, I was also waging my own "war effort." It was deeply magical thinking—I really thought what I did or didn't do could save lives, win battles, bring my dad and uncles home safe. And conversely, that if I screwed up, they were all in greater danger.

Ann Medlock

If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.

James Baldwin

Pope John Paul II once said as well, “Lebanon is a message more than it is a country.” Now this diversity has turned into fragmentation and the richness into poverty, awaiting a miraculous remedy.

Rami Ollaik

Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

Dan Barker

Your every ill-thought, secreted hate, cynical and vicious judgment you carry is meant only for you.

Bryant McGill

There is nothing worse than fear. Fear is worse than cancer, fear is worse than torture, fear is worse than betrayal and fear is even worse than death.

Bryant McGill

No, I mean I'm sorry that you've inherited such a miserable, collapsing Old Country. A place where rich Bankers own everything, where you've got to be grateful for a part-time job with no benefits and no retirement plan, where the most health insurance you can afford is being careful and hoping you don't get sick, where --

Cory Doctorow

There will be a great imbalance in our strengths if we fight, because I am prepared to die and you are desperate to live.

Tehmina Durrani

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.

Arundhati Roy

We always cherish and miss the time passed yet struglling for a better future but after moving to next level we feel the past was beautiful

Salman Ahmad

You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.

Rebecca Solnit

I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.

Helen Potrebenko

If you cannot be open-minded, then you do not possess your ideas, your ideas possess you.

Bryant McGill

...William Stegner...coined the term 'the geography of hope,' countering the argument that wilderness preservation served elites with the assertion that wilderness could be a place in which everyone could locate their hopefulness even if few actually entered it.

Rebecca Solnit

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.

Simone Weil

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

Shane Claiborne

If you look at all the variables in nature that are saidto determine human “sex,” you can’t possibly find one that will unequivocally split the species into two. Each of the so-called criteria of sexedness is itself a continuum—including chromosomal variables, genital and gonadal variations,reproductive capacities, endocrinological proportions, and any other criterion you could think of. Any or all of these different variables may line up in any number of ways, and all of the variables may vary independently of one another.

John Stoltenberg

Be the patience you seek

Bryant McGill

His voice was reassuring and calm, his expression soft, his eyes brighter than ever. Oh Ahura Mazda, she’d never wanted any man so intently in all her life. She ached to have him touch her, kiss her, taste her. And Ivar did as she wished. He put her hand to his nose to smell her skin, kissed her inner wrist to taste her, his lips lingered over her racing pulse. Finally, it was confirmed in actions and direct words, spoken aloud and repeated seven times… She felt the rush of desire ripping through her body, an intense sensation of warmth upon her skin, the blissful waves of uneasiness swamped through her, tingling her nerves.

Widad Akreyi

Because we are always growing, life compounds and magnifies what is already in us. If you are miserable you grow in misery and if you are joyful you grow in joy. This makes self-love is the perfect soil from which to grow love.

Bryant McGill

How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.

Rebecca Solnit

Humanity needs heroic leadership from those who see all life as precious.

Bryant McGill

The Internet is not so different from a highly interactive videogame with competitors set to be offed.

Audacia Ray

...Bin Laden's quotes from the Quaran resonated in my brain: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck." "If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place." "Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them, besiege them, ambush them." "You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The revolution of consciousness is connected to the food revolution

Bryant McGill

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

Nelson Mandela

I'd never really believed in terrorists before--I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me--starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia--that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.

Cory Doctorow

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

James Baldwin

Someone asked me once at a talk why I so stress the positive with my students yet am such an unstinting critic of those who run our culture and who are killing the planet. I answered immediately, “Power. If I’ve got power or authority over someone, it’s my responsibility to use that only to help them. It’s my job to accept and praise them into becoming who they are.

Derrick Jensen

No Child of YoursI saw a child hide in the cornerSo I went and asked her nameShe was so naive and so petiteWith such a tiny frame. 'No one,' she replied, that's what I am calledI have no family, no one at allI eat, I sleep, I get depressedThere is no life, I have nothing left.''Why hide in the corner?' I had to ask twiceBecause I've been hurt, it not very niceI tried to stop it, it was out of my controlI feared for myself I wanted to go. I begged for my sorrow to disappearI turned in my bed, oh God, I knew they were near'So come on little girl, where do you goA path ahead, or a path to unknown?'With that she arose, her head hung lowShe held herself for only she knowsHer tears held back, her heart like iceIt looks as though she has paid the price.The ice started melting, her tears to flowThe memories flood back, still so many years to goThe pain, the anger all built up insideNowhere to run, nowhere to hide.It will get better, just wait and seeYou'll get a life, though you'll never be fireOpen your heart and love yourselfThe abuse you suffered was NOT your fault.

Teresa Cooper

Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.

Bryant McGill

Service to others is the rent you pay for living on this planet.

Marian Wright Edelman

Have compassion for people as long as you are one of them too.

Bryant McGill

Let them have guns' is as much a solution to mass murder and gun violence as 'Let them have drugs' is a solution to drug addiction.

DaShanne Stokes

A complex world of intrigues and power play among couples hascombined to deny young people the love and attention they trulydeserve, more and more teenagers are leaving home to peer up withbad influence which eventually lands them in jail for the lucky onesand six feet under for the not so lucky.

Oche Otorkpa

There is no way to escape conflict in life, and there is no way to escape peace in life.

Bryant McGill

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.

Simone Weil

The naively cynical measure a piece of legislation, a victory, a milestone not against the past or the limits of the possible, but against their ideas of perfection...

Rebecca Solnit

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much. It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.

Simone Weil

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

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Nelson Mandela

Your lowest moment and life can be your best if you survive it and learn from it

Brian Cuban

Lack of accountability weakens the environmental and health rights of citizens; it damages peace- building and reconciliation initiatives; impedes the implementation of global health policies; leads to the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity; and weakens democracy, justice, human rights, and international security.

Widad Akreyi

Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself -- consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good -- that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution.

Simone Weil

I couldn't possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar!

Russell Brand

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky.

Elie Wiesel

Everybody’s scared, but if you don’t let your fears stop you, that’s bravery.

Leslie Feinberg

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