Activist Quotes

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Malcolm X

Malala Yousafzai

Greta Thunberg

Yoko Ono

Thomas Paine

Henning Mankell

If you had told me 28 years ago that the largest organization in the world touching the lives of gays and lesbians would be a church, I would not have believed you. So many members of the lesbian and gay community feel they have had violence done to them by religious groups that it is very difficult to evangelize any members of our community. But we do evangelize.

Our very strength as lesbians lies in the fact that we are outside of patriarchy; our existence challenges its life.

Charlotte Bunch

I think the inconveniences of a segregated education are much greater than the inconveniences of busing students so that they can get an integrated quality education.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet.

I remember one thing that marred this time for me; the movie "Gone with the Wind." When it played in Mason [MI], I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug.

Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born,

Malala Yousafzai

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.

When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell.

Mary Elizabeth Lease

And besides, it drives the dragon crazy when you sing about his downfall even though you are bleeding

Marriages might be made in Heaven, but too often they are consummated right here on earth.

Alice Dunbar Nelson

It's not the suffering of birth, death, love that the young reject, but the suffering of endless labor without dream, eating the spare bread in bitterness, being a slave without the security of a slave.

Meridel Le Sueur

I understand now my father really thought he was doing me good. Education means a lot to Palestinians. We've become some of the most educated people in the world through our diaspora. We've had to be. When you ain't got land, your degree may be your only solid ground. May father felt (feels) that being a doctor would give me security. How can I explain that I'm not safe from anything if I don't write?

We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass.' It's always about critical connections.

Grace Lee Boggs

All my life I have gone out on a limb, but I have turned the limb into a bridge, and there is cool, clear water flowing under. The world is a challenging lover, and I, helplessly in love.

Scholarship that is indifferent to human suffering is immoral.

Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one.

Then the Sorcerer Science entered, and where e'er he waved his wand Fresh wonders and fresh mysteries rose on every hand.

Frances Power Cobbe

With words, as with bricks, tearing down is easier than building up.

Leonard Roy Frank

Far from being misanthropic, when an animal activist reaches out to a fellow human being, she or he is not only advocating on behalf of animals but helping another person realize the connection between our oppression of animals and the oppression of humans — and how liberating one group benefits the other.

Mark Hawthorne (author)

It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.

We — Russia — want to be a nation of peace. Alas, few people would call us that now. But let's at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar.

The problem, of course, lies with the realities concealed from us. This has always been the case. While the American public has slowly grappled with ongoing injustices visible within our own borders, it has long failed to discover and correct our government's abuses abroad. In the end, however, this is our government, and torture is being utilized in our names and supported by our tax dollars. We are responsible.

Jennifer Harbury

Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias rather than exaggerate them.