Social Change Quotes - Page 4

• Social change comes through people.

  Paul Watson

  People, Social

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• The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

  Andy Stern

  Roles, Movement, Social

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• There is no social-change fairy. There is only change made by the hands of individuals.

  Winona LaDuke

  Hands, Fairy, Individual

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• Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.

  Rebecca West

  Men, Civilization, Reform

  Rebecca West (2010). “The New Meaning of Treason”, p.182, Open Road Media

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• Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process.

  Arundhati Roy

  Real, Land, Class

  Arundhati Roy (2003). “War Talk”, p.41, South End Press

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• In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

  Jessica Mitford

  Fashion, Media, Class

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• The creative process ignites our imagination, and I believe that that same imagination is what will propel us forward with issues of social change. I do think we have to acknowledge that we are a very capitalistic and consumptive nation, and that talk about conservation or issues of sustainability is never going to be popular with the dominant culture because it means checks and balances on an economy that is reserved for the dollar, rather than an economy that honors and respects spiritual resources and the right of all life to participate on the planet, not just our species.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

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• Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Thinking, Profound, Revolutionary

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• A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.

  John Dewey

  Giving, Mind, Different

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education”, p.102, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is remarkable for its truth-telling about two important issues concerning Alabama's past and present: the civil rights movement and immigration. These stories, rendered through the words and eyes of a young Latina girl who came from Argentina to Marion, Alabama, are made vivid and immediate through Weaver's highly accessible drawings and dialogue. This is a book-about maturation, family, education, and social change-every schoolchild, parent, and citizen should experience.

  Sena Jeter Naslund

  Girl, Book, Eye

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• For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view of law is singularly empty of light and leading. In the dispersed sovereignty of modern states, and especially in times of rapid social change, law must look to the future as well as to history and precedent, and to what is possible and right as well as to what is actual.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Views, Law, Light

  "Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights". Book by William Ernest Hocking, Preface (20 May 1926), p. vii, 1926.

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• Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.

  Pope Francis

  Essentials, Unions, Impossible

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• Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.

  Emma Goldman

  Moving, Expression, Law

  Address to the Jury, delivered 9 July 1917, New York

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• When a woman has the opportunity to speak truth to power, it's important that she does, even if it's just trying to get a crosswalk in her neighborhood. That's how social change happens!

  Kirsten Gillibrand

  Opportunity, Important, Trying

  "Meet Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (and Take Her Work Advice)". Interview with Cindi Leive, www.glamour.com. March 11, 2014.

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• Public education is a great instrument of social change. Through it, if we so desire, we can make our country more nearly a democracy without classes. To do so will require the efforts of us all-teachers, administrators, taxpayers and statesmen. Education is a social process, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today.

  James Bryant Conant

  Education, Country, Teacher

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• William Wilberforce...w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life... To forget such men is foolish.

  J. I. Packer

  Blessed, Men, Evil

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• When your focus is social change and not financial change why wouldn't you want to share that openly? Innovation only succeeds when it's shared. If you're a pioneer and you come up with something that can change the world and you turn round and say 'I'm not going to share this idea with anyone' then you only impact the few and not the many.

  Cameron Sinclair

  Ideas, Impact, Focus

  "Quotes of the day: Cameron Sinclair", www.cnn.com. July 11, 2008.

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• Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

  Emma Goldman

  Real, Law, Direct Action

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.44, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• All social change begins with a conversation.

  Margaret J. Wheatley

  Social, Conversation

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• I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.

  Dolores Huerta

  Thinking, Ideas, Tactics

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• I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.

  Paul Krugman

  Thinking, Great Success, Social

  "Economist Paul Krugman Is a Hard-Core Science Fiction Fav". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. May 30, 2012.

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• When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to....transform their pain into healings; ...transform their tears to laughter: ...transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness.

  Harry Hay

  Mother, Pain, Laughter

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• The White House has embarked on a mission to convince the people of our country that Social Security is in dire need of drastic change in order to save it for all workers

  Barbara Boxer

  Change, Country, White

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• If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex,' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes.

  Gary Bauer

  Sex, People, Definitions

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• Humans enter this world and awaken to a simple truth: We must find our story with this great epic of being.

  Brian Swimme

  Change, Epic, Simple

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