American Activist Quotes

If you are asking the wrong question, it doesn't matter how good the answer is, you aren't going to get where you want to go.

Marriage may be polygamic, monogamic, polyandric, complex according to the Oneida pattern, or other, and is true marriage (I do not say perfect marriage) so long as it promotes the happiness of the persons married, and the procreation, support, and education of children, and so long as it is founded on the joint free contract of the persons married, and remains under the sanction of the organic society of which those persons are members.

William Batchelder Greene

The task of organizing human happiness needs the active cooperation of man and woman: it cannot be relegated to one half of the world.

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.

[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.

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

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

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."

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

Nannie Helen Burroughs

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

The capitalist has no heart, but harpoon him in the pocketbook and you will draw blood.

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.

Fifteen years ago, a new chapter in this record opened, a spontaneous modern response to the condition of the Black minority. It began with a new kind of confrontation, a new style of leadership, and a new sense of urgency which have since then generated conflicts in many other areas of the national life. It was the beginning of what we now call The Movement.

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

David Blankenhorn

But the homosexual and abortion lobbies are evil twins with the same agenda. Both want the freedom to commit illicit sex without physical or moral consequences.

We do not live in a world that mainly suffers bad policies due to lack of ideas about better ones, or lack of elegant explanations supporting good policies, but one that suffers bad policies due to system and meta-system level incentives.

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.

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

Jessica Mathews

When I think of my past life, and the bitter trials I have endured, I can scarcely believe I live, and yet I do; and, with the help of Him who notes the sparrow's fall, I mean to fight for my down-trodden race while life lasts.

Sarah Winnemucca

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

Friends are an indispensable part of a meaningful life. They are the ones who share our burdens and multiply our blessings. A true friend sticks by us in our joys and sorrows. In good times and bad, we need friends who will pray for us, listen to us, and lend a comforting hand and an understanding ear when needed.

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers,

Barbara Katz Rothman

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

Rose Pastor Stokes

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

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)