Activist Quotes

• Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• I believe people who practice their beliefs in daily life are activists.

  Jasmine Guy

  Believe, Practice, People

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• I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Giving, Historical

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• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The folks celebrating Jim Bunning are seeing him as an anti-government, anti-spending activist. But to embrace Jim Bunning is to embrace a strange record, if you really are a libertarian, if you really are a deficit hawk, if you really care about spending and responsibility.

  Rachel Maddow

  Responsibility, Government, Records

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• I oppose the attempts of homosexual activists to treat homosexual activity as a civil right to be protected and promoted by the government.

  Todd Akin

  Hippie, Government, Treats

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• It's funny how most activists are pacifists.

  Craig Reucassel

  Funny, Life, Pacifist

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• In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Believe, People, Political

  Lawrence Lessig (2002). “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”, p.5, Vintage

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• Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.

  Lance Loud

  Believe, Gay, Gauges

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• Howard Dean is not the first politician to distort facts in his own interests. But many activists in the party he now leads are puzzled over what he thinks he is accomplishing politically. Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than even a flawed Islamic republic.

  Robert Novak

  Party, Islamic, Thinking

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• This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life.

  Tom McCall

  Love Life, Oregon, Terminal Cancer

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• It's been important to me to be a good activist, a good thinker, a good musician, a good singer, and a good entertainer. You can't do it all, but I have walked those delicate lines as best I know how.

  Holly Near

  Important, Musician, Lines

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• Being a humanitarian, supporting animal rights activists, human rights activists, it's all the same.

  Daryl Hannah

  Animal, Rights, Humanitarian

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• I have referred to myself as an accidental activist on more than one occasion.

  Joan Blades

  Occasions

  "MoveOn as an Instrument of the People". Interview with Terrence McNally, www.alternet.org. June 24, 2004.

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• I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights.

  David Duke

  Rights, Europe, White

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• A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals.

  Michael Pollan

  Struggle, Animal, Rights

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• As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.

  Michelle Shocked

  Real, Army, Identity

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• What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.

  Karl Rove

  Justice, Empathy, Understanding

  "Republicans and Obama's Court Nominees" by Karl Rove, www.wsj.com. May 7, 2009.

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• Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

  Michael N. Castle

  Believe, Struggle, Rights

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• I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.

  Norman Lear

  Strong, Careers, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. April 27, 2005.

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• The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

  Angela Davis

  Taken, Issues, Political

  Angela Y. Davis (2011). “Women, Culture & Politics”, p.13, Vintage

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• The place to find the explanation for the liberal-activist mindset of the courts is in the political arena.

  Stockwell Day

  Political, Arena, Mindset

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• But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists.

  Paul Farmer

  Thinking, Parent, Causes

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• I can't remember when I wasn't an animal rights activist.

  Ali MacGraw

  Animal, Rights, Remember

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• Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Kings, Hate, Light

  "A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings".

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