Activism Quotes - Page 17

• I don't know why there's not more activism today. I do think that your generation is twenty times smarter than our generation ever was, but the problem with being smart like you guys is that it can lead you really easily to being cynical, and cynicism is actually a pacifying attitude.

  Bill Ayers

  Attitude, Smart, Thinking

  Source: thepointmag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?

  Bill O'Reilly

  Father, Party, Government

  7 Copy quote

• To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.

  Conor Oberst

  Song, People, Political

  5 Copy quote

• I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Jobs, Believe, Responsibility

  4 Copy quote

• Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Men, Philanthropy, Ends

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard A. Posner (1997). “The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”, p.95, University of Chicago Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.

  Tom Robbins

  Self, Seductive, Political

  6 Copy quote

• And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Running, Despair, Noise

  51 Copy quote

• The [Booker] prize was actually responsible in many ways for my political activism. I won this thing and I was suddenly the darling of the new emerging Indian middle class – they needed a princess. They had the wrong woman. I had this light shining on me at the time, and I knew that I had the stage to say something about what was happening in my country. What is exciting about what I have done since is that writing has become a weapon, some kind of ammunition.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, Princess, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Activism is something that no one can fake. You get angry. You cry. But you never throw in your towel, because that anger is what is propelling you to further action.

  Leymah Gbowee

  Women, Fake, Towels

  70 Copy quote

• Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

  Michael Shermer

  Environmental, Flip, Global Warming

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.36, Henry Holt and Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Peasant people ... don't have a chance to share in the riches that the planet can offer because some people are taking off so much of the pleasures of this world, and there's only so much to go around.

  Dorothy Stang

  People, Environmental, World

  6 Copy quote

• Love is hate
  War is Peace
  No is Yes
  And we're all free.

  Tracy Chapman

  Peace, Hate, War

  Song: Why?, Album: Tracy Chapman, 1988

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• We would like to see the virtual elimination of the transmission of [HIV] from mother to child by 2015. ... We believe it can be achieved with political will.

  Annie Lennox

  Mother, Children, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.

  Alex Steffen

  Energy, Climate, Generations

  4 Copy quote

• When you're a 20-something grassroots activist, and you're deciding how to spend your time and money to make a difference, it makes a lot of sense to cause a million in damage with just $100 of investment. That's a better return than any other form of activism I've been involved in.

  Rod Coronado

  Animal, Differences, Making A Difference

  6 Copy quote

• It's not like activist work is a nice add-on to what's really important, the spiritual work. The two are inseparable and it goes both ways. Many people are hardcore activists for decades, and they encounter burnout, futility, or a feeling of imbalance. Sometimes they need to go so far as to drop their activism and go on a spiritual journey. They're realizing that all the stuff they're trying to change in the world isn't just out there in the world. It's in them, too. And as long as they're blind to what's in them, they're going to continually re-create it in all that they do.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Spiritual, Nice, Journey

  Source: www.mindfulnessbell.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In your dreams you can see yourself as a prophet saving the world.

  Frank Zappa

  Dream, Peace, Special

  Song: Son Of Orange County

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was never an activist, in the sense that I didn't really join a lot of organizations. I wasn't out in the streets. But what I did become was a writer. My activism was in writing.

  Vivian Gornick

  Writing, Organization, Activist

  Interview with Madeleine Schwartz, www.believermag.com. March 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Going through intense change with an ignorant and apathetic citizenry, driven by a corporate agenda, is a really, really scary proposition. But going into it with an educated and empowered citizenry that feels it can determine the course of its society and can hold its corporations and governments accountable has a lot of power and potential to it. To me, that's what makes activism so important.

  Tim DeChristopher

  Government, Scary, Ignorant

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wanted to write and think. Activism is a displacing kind of passion.

  Randall Robinson

  Passion, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that the activism I've become involved with informs and enhances my life in a lot of ways, and definitely career-wise. This record wouldn't exist [without that activism], for one.

  Thao Nguyen

  Wise, Thinking, Careers

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Often people who already had an interest in human rights work. What I did notice with all of them, even the people who professed to be interested in human rights, was that activism was somewhat a concept in their mind - a symbolic flag on the quad or something to show how many people were starving in the world. But once they saw their efforts connected to a person, I did see a change.

  Adam Braver

  Rights, People, Effort

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I really got attracted to the idea of touching so many people and that idea of art transcending entertainment and art and activism being synonymous.

  Kofi Siriboe

  Art, Ideas, People

  Source: www.ebony.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those stories weren't being written at all - stories about women's inner lives and outer activism. We've come miles and miles, but we still don't have an equal rights amendment yet. We don't have equal pay yet. There's a lot of blind misogyny that's not personal, but institutionalized. We still have work to do, but even just looking at those old Ms. Magazines is a cool thing to do - to see how daring they were. They just went right into the belly of the beast.

  Marisa Tomei

  Rights, Equal Pay, Stories

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't claim to know a lot about Mexico, but I did talk to quite a number of left Mexican intelectuals, and they all said the same thing. That there's a lot of popular, kind of, concern and activism, but it is very fragmented. That the groups have very specific, narrow agendas and they don't interact and cooperate with one another. Ok, that's something you have to overcome to build a mass popular movement. And that's, media can help, but they also benefit from it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Numbers, Mexican

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source