Quotes by Activists - Page 6

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.

Nelson Mandela

What is amazing and revolutionary today will be oppressive tomorrow.

Bryant McGill

We had our arms round each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.

James Baldwin

Being powerful means shifting our minds away from our troubles and into solution-thinking.

Bryant McGill

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

Mahatma Gandhi

An important step in escaping mediocrity is to stop worrying about what other people think of you.

Bryant McGill

I do not know very much about painting, but I know enough to know that the Art Teacher did not know much about it either and that, furthermore, she did not know or care anything at all about the way in which you can destroy a human being. Stephen, in many ways already dying, died a second and third and fourth and final death before her anger.

Jonathan Kozol

Success comes from finding your center and self.

Bryant McGill

You have to reach out to your inner-abuser and make peace. You can't live your life as your own worst enemy!

Bryant McGill

We begin to understand that to co-parent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your stomach doesn't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the sides of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.

Glennon Doyle Melton

If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work. The people of Darfur need to go home now. I write this for them, and for that day, ... and for those still living who might yet have beautiful lives on the earth.

Daoud Hari

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Alice Walker

Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.

Muhammad Ali

Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other's differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.

Leslie Feinberg

Declaring our intentions for a safer and kinder world is the obvious first step toward attaining those goals.

Bryant McGill

Some people know of no other way to interface with others except through their created chaos.

Bryant McGill

Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments.

Bryant McGill

When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?

Naomi Klein

Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.

Maya Angelou

Where there is society, there is no need for charity.

Heather Marsh

...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.

James Baldwin

Being alone is much better than being around negative people out of loneliness or desperation.

Bryant McGill

I don't know how to stop the atrocities. I don't know how to make people care. But looking into my sister's eyes, we seem to have carved out something between us that none of the madness can touch. Invisible threads.

Lisa J. Shannon

Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't. ...If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

Nikki Giovanni

We see the world as we are.

Bryant McGill

I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.

Sophie Scholl

We huddle tightly together as cowards, protecting the ranks of our false collective identity from "less-human" intruders, when the only obvious and sane truth is that we are all the same human beings.

Bryant McGill

A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.

Maya Angelou

Pain is the root of knowledge.

Simone Weil

No woman could have been Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.

Andrea Dworkin

Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.

Amelia Boynton Robinson

In Indian Country,” he says, “we have a different sense of time. I’m learning and you’re learning—and more will.

Gloria Steinem

The most effective form of creation is an act of cooperation, not force.

Bryant McGill

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent conquer him with love.

Mahatma Gandhi

Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together.

Naomi Wolf

Finally, the dirty little secret about sexual objectification is that it is an act that cannot be performed with any attention to its ethical meaning. Experientially —from the point of view of a man who is sexually objectifying—sexual objectification and ethical self awareness are mutually exclusive. A man cannot reflect on what he is doing and its real consequences for real people and at the same time fully accomplish the act of sexual objectifying. There's no way it can be done, because hos own subjective reality is too contingent upon the unreality of someone else. All that can be left "out there" in his field of awareness is the other person's sexedness—an abstract representation of a gender—in comparison with which his own sexedness may flourish and engorge. So it is that a man shuts off his capacity for ethical empathy—whatever capacity he may ever had—in order to commit an act of despersonalization that is "gratifying" essentially because it functions to fulfill his sense of an identity that is authentically male.

John Stoltenberg

In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Rebecca Solnit

IT’S ALL CLEARISIS INVADES YOUR SPHEREYET NO ONE IMAGINES YOUR FEARBUT DON'T WORRYTAUSSI MELEK IS HERERESTORING LIVES NEAR

Widad Akreyi

The very act of writing then, conjuring/coming to 'see', what has yet to be recorded in history is to bring into consciousness what only the body knows to be true. The body - that site which houses the intuitive, the unspoken, the viscera of our being - this is the revolutionary promise of "theory in the flesh

Cherríe L. Moraga

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

Arundhati Roy

America has a unique type of slavery that looks like freedom.

Bryant McGill

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeannette Rankin

It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…

Helen Keller

Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibi

Susan Sarandon

An environment of infinite economic expansion is unsustainable in a world of finite resources.

Bryant McGill

I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there

James Baldwin

If you love someone, you will want to understand them and accept them as they grow and change; similarly, loving yourself involves a never-ending process of self-understanding and self-acceptance through life's ups and downs...we are finally coming to understand that love for neighbor and love for self naturally lead to love for the earth...if you love your neighbor as yourself, you want both them and you to be able to breathe, so you need to love clean fresh air...you want them and you to be able to drink, so you need to love pure water in all its forms...you want them and you to be be able to eat, so you need to care about the climate...." (p. 59-60)

Brian D. McLaren

This isn't about keeping mountains looking pretty. Ending mountaintop removal is about keeping humanity alive.

Rivera Sun

Limitless material growth is not sustainable or moral.

Bryant McGill

It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake.

Pyotr Kropotkin

Entertainment in its broadest sense- popular ballads, vaudeville, films, sculptures, plays, paintings, pornography, pulp novels-- has not only been a primary mode of expression of LGBT identity, but one of the most effective means of social change. Ironically, the enormous political power of these forms was often understood by the people who wanted to ban them, not by the people who were simply enjoying them.

Michael Bronski

When you release yourself from the need for approval and control you can stop punishing yourself and others.

Bryant McGill

You are worthless to others if you don't know your own self and self-worth.

Bryant McGill

The positive emotions that arise in...unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding. The very structure of our economy and society prevent these goals from being achieved.

Rebecca Solnit

We are currently facing many hurdles, BUT will never lose the sight of infinite hope.

Widad Akreyi

Iranian women are very consciously aware of gender-explicit oppression. Therefore: with so much more at stake, Iranian women have each other's back: on the street, in stores, at celebrations, everywhere.

Inga Muscio

Life has a way of shining on people who stand in the sunshine of kind actions.

Bryant McGill

Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs. Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!

Patch Adams

The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news… and it’s not entirely the media’s fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.

Peter McWilliams

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