Social Justice Quotes - Page 18

• The challenge of this age is to resist and conquer in each of our own beings the racist brainwashing that is still active in our minds.

  Wyatt Tee Walker

  Justice, Diversity, Challenges

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• They say the Pharaohs built the pyramids Do you think one Pharaoh dropped one bead of sweat? We built the pyramids for the Pharaohs and we're building for them yet.

  Anna Louise Strong

  Thinking, Sweat, Pyramids

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• The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

  Simone Weil

  Justice, Diversity, Stronger

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.50, Routledge

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• Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll called every week is appalling, not only because of the lives taken, the cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters.

  William Wells Brown

  Taken, Race, Justice

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• Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."

  Cornel West

  Mean, Land, White

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• Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilization has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages.

  Rebecca West

  Civilization, Giving, Justice

  1912 'The Personal Service Association: Work for Idle Hands to Do', in The Clarion,13 Dec.

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• Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

  Rebecca West

  Mean, Fire, Justice

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

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• Truth knows no color; it appeals to intelligence.

  Ralph Wiley

  Truth, Color, Justice

  Ralph Wiley (1993). “What Black People Should Do Now: Dispatches from Near the Vanguard”, Ballantine Books

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• The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon them.

  Naomi Wolf

  Broken, Justice, Diversity

  1990 The Beauty Myth, ch.1, 'The Beauty Myth'.

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• 

  Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, Thinking, People

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.202, Booklassic

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• Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Struggle, Justice, Diversity

  Thoughts on the Education of Daughters "Matrimony" (1787)

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• Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Progress

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, World

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli (1995). “Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints”, p.149, Cambridge University Press

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• The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Alive

  :The French Revolution" by Mary Wollstonecraft, Bk. V, (Ch. 4), 1794.

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• Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

  William Butler Yeats

  Teaching, Fire, Filling Up

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• We were trying to transform America, not triumph over white folk.

  Andrew Young

  White, America, Justice

  Andrew Young (1996). “An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America”, Harpercollins

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• The danger is that people may mistake what is basically a change in vocabulary for a change in behavior, practices, and attitudes. While practically all Americans have learned to talk inoffensively, not enough have learned to think differently, nor act positively.

  Whitney M. Young

  Attitude, Mistake, Thinking

  Whitney M. Young (1964). “To be equal”

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• Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.

  Whitney M. Young

  Beautiful, Mother, Jobs

  Whitney M. Young (1969). “Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society”

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• The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.

  Norman Cousins

  War, Justice, Obsession

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• Our motto is to work for peace based on social justice. Our mandate is to improve the condition, health and safety of workers, and our mission is universal.

  David A. Morse

  Safety, Justice, Motto

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• White people who are doing this work need to make their stories known to serve as guides for others.

  Beverly Daniel Tatum

  White, People, Justice

  Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997). “"Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Other Conversations about Race”, Basic Books

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• In order to prevent chronic discomfort, Whites may learn not to notice.

  Beverly Daniel Tatum

  Order, Justice, May

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• You can't organize people if you don't love them. And however hard it can be to love the racist you come in contact with; doing so is the first obligation of a white antiracist.

  Tim Wise

  White, People, Justice

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• People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.

  Tim Wise

  Children, Color, Long

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• Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's a scaring - trying to scare people in the voting booth. Under my tax plan, that he continues to criticize, I set a third - the federal government should take no more than a third of anybody's check.

  George W. Bush

  Math, Men, Thinking

  "Person of the Year; The Job Ahead; Breaking Ranks". www.cnn.com. December 17, 2000.

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