Social Change Quotes

You don't have to be a billionaire to believe you can make a difference. Give your resources to a charity and volunteer in your community.

~ Germany Kent

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

~ John Cage

What you post online speaks VOLUME about who you really are. POST with intention. REPOST with caution.

~ Germany Kent

There's a reason why I've spent one-third of my life doing this. My dream is to meet and connect 3 billion young people of the world to information and opportunities in my lifetime.

~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

The most enduring and galvanizing ideas and values of our civilization are embedded in our stories, from those of Homer, […] and Virgil, […] and to Jesus. It seems to be in our genetic makeup to capture our best ideas in stories, to enjoy them, to learn form them, and to pass them on to others (25)

~ Blake Mycoskie

I am not your dog that you whistle for; I’m not a stray animal you call over, and I am not, I never have been, nor will I ever be, your “baby”!

~ Joy Jennings

So it’s democracy versus capitalism at this point, friends, and we out on this frontier outpost of the human world are perhaps better positioned than anyone else to see this and to fight this global battle, there’s empty land here, there’s scarce and nonrenewable resources here, and we’re going to get swept up into the fight and we cannot choose not to be part of it, we are one of the prizes and our fate will be decided by what happens throughout the human world. That being the case, we had better band together for the common good, for Mars and for us and for all the people on earth and for the seven generations, it’s going to be hard it’s going to take years, and the stronger we are the better our chances, which is why I’m so happy to see that burning meteor in the sky pumping the matrix of life into our world, and why I’m so happy to see you all here to celebrate it together, a representative congress of all that I love in this world, but look I think that steel-drum band is ready to play aren’t you” (shouts of assent) “so why don’t you folks start and we’ll dance till dawn and tomorrow scatter on the winds and down the sides of this great mountain, to carry the gift everywhere.

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom—that the current economic and political system is the only possible one—the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone’s blueprint? It’s not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called “capitalism,” figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin.

~ David Graeber

Revolution does not begin with a group. It begins from the heart.

~ Shahla Khan

You know there’s always prejudice in a revolutionary movement.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?

~ Isaac Asimov

​Equality is not sameness. We all are born different – we look different and we have different circumstances. But, we all are born out of the same universe – the matter that makes our bodies comes from this magnificent universe. I have been a science student but I never heard of black matter used for black bodies, white matter for white bodies, and brown matter for brown bodies and so on.

~ Rashmit Kalra

Two of the greatest hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social change. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.

~ Jim Wallis

Faith reminds us that change is always possible.

~ Jim Wallis

When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature’s gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart’s desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature’s gifts, to use them well.

~ Charles Eisenstein

He was too smitten by his second wife and the sons she produced easily and regularly at eighteen-month intervals to bother too much about a daughter.

~ Anita Nair

The day I realized I could speak well, I decided I won't speak for myself anymore.

~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

Philanthropists should find innovations that release the energies of people. Individuals don't want to be taken care of --they need to be given a chance to fulfill their own potential. (142)

~ Jacqueline Novogratz

I cannot see that keeping the status quo intact would help in any way to solve the problems of inequality or suffering in this world. I would go for taking action towards change instead of accepting the inevitable.

~ Elina Juusola

I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.

~ Simon S. Tam

Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) does not work. Opiate addicts live in our communities and in our families & they work in our businesses.

~ Steven Kassels

We need to make fun of and ridicule the media images that seek to keep us down, divide us against each other by age, class, and race, and insist that we spend so much psychic energy on our faces, clothes and bodies that nothing is left for ideas, social change, or politics.

~ Susan Douglas

..things are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems.

~ Muhammad Yunus

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce...I concluded that if I could only nudge the world a little bit, maybe that would be enough.But nudging isn't enough.

~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within, we cannot impose it on them.

~ Paul Collier

Nobody cares if I die for fighting Marathi breed.

~ Kjiva

It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off.

~ John Scalzi

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

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.

~ Grace Lee Boggs

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.

~ Grace Lee Boggs

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.

~ Grace Lee Boggs