Activist Quotes

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.

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

But, if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement - the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery - the wage slaves - expect salvation - if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Wangari Maathai

Men, permitted to put words (and other things) in women's mouths, create scenes in which women desperately want to be bound, battered, tortured, humiliated, and killed.

Catharine MacKinnon

The gift of water, air, soap, and time allows us to heal and relieve our psyche and soul.

I am an advocate for awareness, the truth, and a person's right to know. I believe that in the absence of the truth, all of us stand helpless to defend ourselves, our families and our health, which is the greatest gift we have.

Erin Brockovich

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.

There are times when sympathy is as necessary as the air we breathe.

Rose Pastor Stokes

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

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

On the Extinction Rebellion movement:

This is a movement devoted to disruptive, nonviolent disobedience in protest against ecological collapse.

Nowhere have women been more excluded from decision-making than in the military and foreign affairs. When it comes to the military and questions of nuclear disarmament, the gender gap becomes the gender gulf.

I wonder that every colored person is not a misanthrope. Surely we have everything to make us hate mankind.

Charlotte Forten Grimké

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

Leonard Roy Frank

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

I am never lonely or discouraged or tired. When you live in constant communion with God, you cannot be lonely. When you perceive the working of God's wonderful plan and know that all good effort bears good fruit, you cannot be discouraged. When you have found inner peace, you are in contact with the source of universal energy and cannot be tired.

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

Will he listen to the voice of the people, this wonderful democrat, this absolute democrat who would not recognise democracy if it came up and puked in his face?

Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides.

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

Alice Dunbar Nelson

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

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.