American Activist Quotes

Never before in the history of the modern research university have entire departments and fields been devoted to purely ideological pursuits.

This, now, is the judgement of our scientific age—the third reaction of man upon the universe! This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.

John Haynes Holmes

On Martin Luther King, Jr. 's speech at the 1963 March on Washington:

At that moment it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared. But it only lasted for a moment.

Coretta Scott King

Facts and not merely opinions are what we want. Emotionalism is not a substitute for the truth.

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.

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.

Do not exalt any path above god. There are many paths that lead to god. So people are capable of finding and following the ways that suit them, provided they do not stand still.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

A precise and universally acceptable definition of the term "nonparametric" is not presently available.

The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.

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

George Fitzhugh

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

Together we have given the world the possibility of one day living on a truly mine-free planet.

God did not create two classes of children or human beings-only one.

Marian Wright Edelman

If a man is pictured chopping off a woman's breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman's breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?

Sally Struthers

Living on the creative edge means daring every day to dream of a world beyond the socially constructed barriers that imprison and divide us.

The black race is not a race of criminals.... Whenever crimes are committed by Negroes, especially crimes of a glaring nature, a sense of shame, of regret is felt by the better elements of the race; not only because of the crime itself, but also because of its tendency to discredit the race, and to increase the already unfavorable impression which so many have of it.

Francis J. Grimké

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

Warner Todd Huston

The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.

Mary Harris Jones

The Jewish nation is indeed, the heart of the world and there is no reason for the existence of empires, kings, rulers, masses or systems aside from their reaction to the Jewish people.

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

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

Affirmative action really isn't about preferential treatment for blacks. It is about removing preferential treatment whites have received through history.

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

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

The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.

Eldridge Cleaver