Social Justice Quotes - Page 19

• I would have the Constitution torn in shreds and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Let us destroy the Constitution and build on its ruins the temple of liberty. I have brothers in slavery. I have seen chains placed on their limbs and beheld them captive.

  William Wells Brown

  Brother, Wind, 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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• It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Race, History

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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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• No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.

  Wendell Willkie

  Men, Rights, America

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• Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Justice, Diversity, Measurement

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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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• 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 would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Sorrow

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• Most of the time when "universal" is used, it's just a euphamism for "white"; white themes, white significance, white culture.

  Merle Woo

  White, Justice, Diversity

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• Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

  Frances Wright

  Rights, Justice, Diversity

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.25

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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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• No nation as rich as ours should have so many people isolated on islands of poverty in such a sea of material wealth.

  Andrew Young

  Islands, Should Have, Sea

  Andrew Young (1994). “A Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

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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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• Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.

  Kim Dae-jung

  Justice, Democracy, Development

  Dae Jung Kim (2004). “The 21st century and the Korean people: selected speeches of Kim Dae-jung, 1998-2004”

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• I want Canada to be the country that is the best in the world at combining economic growth, social justice and environmental sustainability.

  Stephane Dion

  Country, Justice, Growth

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• When we stand for social justice, we testify to the presence of the Kingdom.

  John Wimber

  Justice, Kingdoms, Social

  John Wimber, Kevin Springer (2009). “Power Evangelism”, p.158, Gospel Light Publications

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• It is my expectation that Teacher Education for Democracy and Social Justice will become a rich resource for continuing this multi-layered conversation-from democratic belief to democratic action-that is the hallmark of educational renewal.

  John Goodlad

  Teacher, Educational, Justice

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• What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.

  Margaret Mead

  Acceptance, Justice, Awareness

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• I had reached the conclusion myself that sex was not a division but a continuum, that almost nobody was altogether of one sex or another, and that the infinite subtlety of the shading from one extreme to the other was one of the most beautiful of nature's phenomena.

  Jan Morris

  Beautiful, Sex, Justice

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• As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew, much of what I call history, others will not. But answering that challenge of exclusion is the work of a lifetime.

  Joan Nestle

  Justice, Challenges, Exclusion

  Joan Nestle (1987). “A restricted country: essays and short stories”

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• Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant.

  Anna Quindlen

  Girl, Country, Silly

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