Activist Quotes

The fact is, people work hard and rely on Food Stamps—or SNAP Program—to be able to feed their families. When they work full-time they still live in poverty. That's wrong in our nation. Students who are losing hope because of the difficulty of finding jobs in this tough economy. What we need to do, what is best for America, is to raise wages, create jobs, and then we will move forward. Hard-working people are trying their best, but those who hold on to capital are not sharing the wealth, and there is the problem.

Simone Campbell

People say it is inappropriate for me to get arrested in uniform, but to me it is the validation of all that I signed up to do. I say what I had to go through is what tarnishes the uniform more than anything.

We would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.

David Blankenhorn

My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture.

In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.

William Sloane Coffin

Ecology has no aim, but ecologists have. The problems of the ecologist are not fundamentally different from those of any other kind of naturalist. The superficial differences in aim are due to the different points of views, or methods of approach, rather than to any essential difference in the character of the problem.

Charles C. Adams Jr.

Dollars control people. Community currencies connect people.

It's not the union between my head and the electronic eye what makes me feel 'cyborg', it's the union between the software and my brain.

Tree sitting is a last resort. When you see someone sitting in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society has failed.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Sometimes brothers get so hung up on the myth of revolution that they talk about bringing America to her knees and they can't even wipe out one police station. A lot of brothers play revolutionary; they read a little Fanon, a little Mao and some Marx. Although this information is necessary, it is not sufficient, for we must develop a new plan of revolution for black people here in America.

Maulana Karenga

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

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)

Each of us carries within us a worldview, a set of assumptions about how the world works - what some call a paradigm - that forms the very questions we allow ourselves to ask, and determines our view of future possibilities.

Frances Moore Lappé

We must remember that one of the most insidious ways of keeping women and minorities powerless is to let them only talk about harmless and inconsequential subjects...

[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.

A god that rewards credulity, a god that sanctions slavery, is unworthy of any kind of reverence or respect or devotion.

Matt Dillahunty

At the beginning I was confronted with a choice: move into art or revolutionary politics,... I took the path of art at the age of 18.... I could see this possibility of using the ideas of social change within art.

In today's Britain, the weakest among us are often assumed to be minority communities. In fact, the weakest among us are those minorities-within-minorities for whom the legal right to exit from their communities' constraints amounts to nothing before the enforcement of cultural and religious shaming.

But, to protect men, we must have the power of controlling them. We must first enslave them before we can protect them.

George Fitzhugh

Daring to dream what is deepest in our collective longings is what makes us most human and fully alive.

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

Leonard Roy Frank

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

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

David Silverman

I was learning that, even for a woman with power, the path was dotted with land mines—she's so ambitious. she's so aggressive. she's ruthless. "Funny thing," I used to say, "a man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless... all a woman has to do is put you on hold."

I believe that the hetero-normative, cis-normative, patriarchal, state-capitalist establishment is evil and must be destroyed.