Activist Quotes

Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.

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'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

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

Alice Dunbar Nelson

Scholarship that is indifferent to human suffering is immoral.

We will join hands with you as women of this country.... We will kneel-in, we will sit-in until we can eat at any counter in the United States. We will walk until we are free, until we can walk to any school and take our children to any school in the United States. And we will sit-in, and we will kneel-in, and we will lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote.

Daisy Bates (activist)

Yesterday, on the 17th of May, we Norwegians celebrated our constitution day to mark the signing of Norway's constitution in 1814. Maybe it is because we are a small country: In Norway this is an important day. All over Norway children have paraded in their best clothes to the music of thousands of marching bands, and countless speeches have been made to remind each others, as fellow Norwegians, that freedom should never be taken for granted.

Andreas Heldal-Lund

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

We shall never become an immense power in the world until we concentrate all our money and editorial forces upon one great national daily newspaper, so we can sauce back our opponents every day in the year; once a month or once a week is not enough.

Susan B. Anthony

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.

Let's forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace and inspiration from real women... Two thousand years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women toward the feminist 'salvation' of this world

Annie Laurie Gaylor

United Nations get name for us
Dem go call us "Underdeveloped Nations."
We must be "underdeveloped" to dey
stay 10-10 in one room
First and second day dem go call us
"Third World."

The structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.

Sarah Patton Boyle

No longer 'neath the weight of years—
No longer merged in hopeless fears—
Is now that good time, long delayed,
When right, not might, shall all pervade.
Drive hence despair—no longer doubt,
Since friends within and foes without
Their might and main conjointly blend
To reach the same great, glorious end—
The sweeping from this favored land
The last foul chain and slavish brand.

James Madison Bell

Jihad should be waged in places where there is war. Bombings in places where there is no war is not a good thing.

Abu Bakar Bashir

To take a journey of a thousand miles, you have to begin with the first step from the place where you stand; the romantic description of the journey and the things the body sees on the way and the description of the scenery are of no use unless you lift your foot and take the first step.

There are some things, once they are done, that we can never question, because if we did, we wouldn't be able to go on. And we have to go on, every single day.

Caragh M. O'Brien

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

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

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

Leonard Roy Frank

Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence.

Vernon Richards

We did freak out the honkies. We were feared throughout the Dakotas. I could never figure out why this should have been so. We were always the victims. We never maimed or killed. It was we who died or got crippled.

Mary Brave Bird

It is a specious but very false reason to allege that, since man has acquired this taste, he ought to be permitted to indulge it — in the first place because Nature has not given him cooked flesh, and because several ages must have rolled away before fire was used. … Nature, then, could have given man only raw or living flesh, and we know that it is repugnant to him over the whole extent of the earth.

Jean-Antoine Gleizes

Autonomy is the capacity to act on principles that are one's own and one will exercise this capacity by means of a process of rational reflection on these principles. Autonomy is thought to be necessary for attributing political responsibility.

Education is not a luxury in modern American society-it is essential for survival.

John M. Perkins