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.

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.

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

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

Why, since people must outnumber the minority that comprises the State and its oppressive forces, have they submitted so meekly to it?

Either Christ is a liar or war is never necessary, and very properly assuming that Christ told the truth, it follows that the State is without [in the words of Father Macksey] 'judicial authority to determine when war is necessary,' because it is never necessary.

[About PETA] When we first started, we were able to take our undercover video to 60 Minutes or 20/20, and they would fight over it and do these thought-provoking exposés. Now that society has become less interested in these programs and more interested in sensationalism and the tabloids, we have to reinvent ourselves to keep our issues on the front burner; we have had to do a lot of theatrical things. … Much of what we do is geared toward kids, who have a great sense of justice. This is the first generation in which kids have grown up with this issue. Twenty-five years ago, parents were petrified when their kids went vegetarian—some still are.

I am not for separatism from the United States. My motto is justice but not independence from or revolution against the United States.

We [Republicans] want you to get rich and the Democrats don't. They want to tax you as if you were rich already.

Grover Norquist

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

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.

We are here to deliver a message to America: We are here and we will never be silent again.

David Silverman

Geometry would be best to begin with plain plane geometry, immutably plane. Surely if anything could minister to the mind diseased it would be the steadfast contemplation of a right angle, an existence that no mist of human tears could blur, no blow of fate deflect.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

America is the ultimate denial of the theory of man's continuous evolution.

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.

Without land we are not secure. The reason I am saying land is important, is that when you look at the trees, you feel satisfied. Not because you have eaten, but because it is your land. Without land you are like a bird that is flying from one place to another without a nest. That is why land is important.

When the environment is destroyed, plundered or mismanaged, we undermine our quality of life and that of future generations.

Wangari Maathai

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

We want to be able to move freely and safely in our daily lives, free from the threat of random hate violence.themselves by turning the Constitution on its head and claim protection and permission to demonize and denigrate us. Hiding behind the perversion of the concepts of religious freedom and political speech, those people have carved out a special right to impose their bigotry and hatred for us.

Jeffrey Montgomery

Dollars control people. Community currencies connect people.

All ye having business before this honorable Court draw nigh, give your attention and ye shall be heard. No, no. Draw nigh and bend over. They're gonna rape you up the butt!

Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self- sovereignty.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Without being able to be armed you cannot be a real citizen.

Warner Todd Huston

On one level the sixties revolt was an impressive illustration of Lenin's remark that the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.

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

Alice Dunbar Nelson