I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.
~ Octavia E. Butler
It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off.
~ John Scalzi
Don’t be a witness. Be an activist.
~ Dashanne Stokes
A study of the San Francisco Beat enclave by psychiatrist Dr. Francis Rigney in the late 1950's showed 60 percent were so psychotic or crippled by tensions, anxiety and neurosis as to be nonfunctional in the competitive world. In contrast, the several studies released so far made of the student radicals at Berkeley show them to be stable, serious, and of above-average intelligence. The point is that the Beats had to cop out of the Rat Race because they couldn't perform; the New Left chooses to reject a society it could easily be successful in.
~ Jack Newfield
I really admire people in the public eye, who have influence or celebrity and they take a stand on something important, bring awareness and take compassionate action.When you have been blessed with abundance or are an influencer and you bring attention to a cause, or do something to help the world, that's using your blessings for the greater good. Those are the people who inspire me.
~ Eileen Anglin
This is the world as it is. This is where you start.
~ Saul D. Alinsky
16 days of activism? I don't know about you folks, but I'm an activist every single day.
~ Christina Engela
I remember the philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked why he spent his time protesting against nuclear war and getting arrested on demonstrations. Why didn’t he continue to work on the serious philosophical and logical problems which have major intellectual significance? And his answer was pretty good. He said: “Look, if I and others like me only work on those problems, there won’t be anybody around to appreciate it or be interested.
~ Chomsky Noam
I was born for this moment in Earth's history and if you believe you are a lightworker, so were you.
As far as we could tell, the face of the revolution was a sea of embroidering women, patiently waiting the resignation of their repressive governor.
~ Diana Denham
We are the vanguard of our times. What we do in our lifetimes will set the future of all beings. The loving, conscious choices you make for yourself will effect the future of life and of souls uncounted. This is how important you are. And this is how important loving yourself and living your best life is.
Extract and expel implicit biases from your work life. Don't taint our visitors with your bias and views. Allow them to form their own conclusions where it's developmentally appropriate.
~ Monica O Montgomery
We are beginning to understand that the world is always being made fresh and never finished; that activism can be the journey rather than the arrival; that's struggle doesn't always have to be confrontational but can take the form of reaching out to find common ground with the many others in our society who are also seeking ways out from alienation, isolation, privatization, and dehumanization by corporate globalization.
~ Grace Lee Boggs
Voices joined together for a cause are like a wave that changes the shore.
Still, it becomes clearer every day that organizing or joining massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently address the crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are.
The physical threat posed by climate change represents a crisis that is not only material but also profoundly spiritual at its core because it challenges us to think seriously about the future of the human race and what it means to be a human being.
Every crisis, actual or impending, needs to be viewed as an opportunity to bring about profound changes in our society. Going beyond protest organizing, visionary organizing begins by creating images and stories of the future that help us imagine and create alternatives to the existing system.
A single whisper can be quite a disturbance when the rest of the audience is silent.
~ Anthony Marra
You never do any good until you get into some trouble.
~ Arthur Miller
There is nothing like the whites of someone’s eyes to convince you how very true what you believe is, how very much you must act on it.
~ Jennine Capo Crucet
We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.
~ George Orwell
But if you sit around thinking what to do and end up not doing anything, why bother even thinking about it? You're better off going out on the town and having a good time. No, we have to think and act. That's what we're doing here, and that's what you have to do.
~ Elvia Alvarado
There is no politically neutral fence available for us to sit on, and our attempts to do so have the consequence (intended or not) of supporting the existing political system.
~ Anne Kearney
I'm fighting now only for individual captive dolphins and dolphins in general but also for people, for the mind and sensibilities of future generations toward the world itself.
~ Richard O'barry
Reuse is the original green collar job.
~ Maryellen Etienne
We can't achieve zero waste without reuse.
I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the subtleties of sin and the persistence of evil, we would soon be living in moral anarchy and political chaos if there were no provision for justice.
~ Eugene H. Peterson
Why is it that the people who seem to have the most to say aren’t doing anything at all?
~ Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
Do what you can, when you can.
~ Johnny Worthen
There is a stereotype that vegans talk about being vegan all the time. The irony is, once people find out I’m vegan, I quickly become their confessor, counselor, and sounding board.
People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.
~ Doris Kearns Goodwin
I really admired Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, but my form of activism would have to be the written word, not the empty stomach. My parents had brought my family t the United States because of the fear of empty stomachs.
~ Josefina López
Lincoln on Grant: He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move.
~ Abraham Lincoln
A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
~ Nadine Gordimer
While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.
~ Shane Claiborne
No genuine change in society ever occurs without the mass public getting behind a cause. The good guys in government are counting on enough of us common people waking up and demanding more rights and greater freedoms.
~ James Morcan
I guess it's the curse of our generation, having to put aside our lives to do the right thing.
~ Allan Dare Pearce
To crank up a noisy bad stance out in a place like San Francisco and start yelling about “getting things done in Washington” is like sitting far back in the end zone seats at the Super Bowl and screaming at the Miami linebackers “Stop Duane Thomas!
~ Hunter S. Thompson
In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been plenty of concern and activism about violent repression of blacks in the South, and it took a couple of students sitting in at a lunch counter to really set it off. Small acts can make a big difference when there is a background of concern, understanding, and preliminary activism.
~ Noam Chomsky
Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied - they don't after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else.
~ Morrissey
