American Activist Quotes

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which the Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawns so wide and deep.

Mary Church Terrell

The automobile reaches to the heart of the American self-image in the way the horse once did in the West.

Jessica Mathews

Watching people be shunned for their "otherness," every one of us begins to feel a little doubt about ourselves. You may want to deny that part of yourself that doesn't measure up, and not speak up. If we are serious about stopping AIDS, we have to end the silence and stigma around homosexuality—and in the process rethink our beliefs about what it means to be Black and male in America.

A nation to be strong, must be united; to be united, must be equal in condition; to be equal in condition, must be similar inhabits and feeling; to be similar in habits and feeling, must be raised in national institutions as the children of a common family, and citizens of a common country.

Paycheck discrimination is not the only obstacle preventing women from having the same economic opportunities as men. As our country continues to focus on our economic recovery, leveling the financial playing field for women must be a priority. According to recent predictions, within a generation, more families will be supported by women than men. If these primary breadwinners earn lower incomes, it won't just affect their families, but also consumer spending and our larger financial growth.

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

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

Warner Todd Huston

My job here today, our job, is to tell you the one thing you can count on. The one thing I can guarantee you can expect in life is that you will experience the thoroughly unexpected.

The 'survival of the fittest' is beneficently inevitable; the capitalist is powerless against labor, unless the State... steps in, and helps him catch and fleece his victims. The old plea of despotism, that liberty is unsafe, reappears now in the mistaken notion that competition is hostile to labor.

You want me to defend the riches reaped from the super-exploitation of the darker races of mankind by a few white, rich, super-monopolists who control the most vast empire that has ever existed in man's one million years of History—all in the name of "Freedom"!

I like women a lot and I champion them. I tell people when they are beautiful, I tell other actresses when I think their work is amazing... So I think women feel relatively comfortable in my presence. Also, because I'm not perfect, you know? I've got flabby thighs, I'm aging and I'm 5ft 3in. I talk about my failing in contemporary society in terms of gyms or food or whatever. I think there's a polite appreciation that I'm honest.

Gillian Anderson

As long as people use tactics to oppress or restrict other people from being free, there is work to be done.

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

My vocation has been to wage a crusade against lynching, disenfranchisement, peonage, public segregation, injustice, denial of service in public places for color, in war time and peace.

William Monroe Trotter

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

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. … Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.

I have accepted the challenge of being a Negro in America and of being an American first.

Education and justice are democracy's only life insurance....

Nannie Helen Burroughs

I can't wait for the next fad though, and I predict it's going to be Pennsylvania dutch culture, very Amish. It's going to be bonnets and butter churns.

Janeane Garofalo

The Negro. The South. These are details. The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared, and detested. I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any 'inferior' group. Only the details would have differed. The story would be the same.

John Howard Griffin

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

Leonard Roy Frank

There are almost half a million Americans behind bars today for breaking a drug law. The United States incarcerates more people for drug law violations than Western Europe incarcerates for everything, and they have more people than we do. There were 50,000 people behind bars on drug charges in America in 1980; now we have almost a tenfold increase. Yet extraordinarily few politicians are talking about that.

Ethan Nadelmann

Oh, Mama was a smart woman. It takes a smart woman to fall in love with a good man.

Sarah Louise Delany

Can one regard a fellow creature as a property item, an investment, a piece of meat, an 'it,' without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?

Karen Davis (activist)