Quotes About Activism

The world you live in is not a given; much of what is best in it has been built through the struggles of passionate activists over the last centuries. They won us many freedoms and protected many beauties. Count those gifts among your growing heap.

I often wonder if I should adopt a cause to call my own or start tweeting inspirational messages. And when tragedy strikes and the world takes to social media, is it now my responsibility to respond with #RIPs and #prayfors?

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.

The 'Living-Wage Campaign' at Harvard is like a Boston winter: you know it's going to strike, but wonder only when and how hard.

When I was 16 years old, I went scuba diving in Greece and saw more plastic bags than fish. I wondered why we couldn't just clean it up. That rather simple question stuck in my head.

As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.

I always wondered why there weren't any films about Cesar Chavez. There are movies about other civil rights leaders in this country, but why not Chavez?

The only thing I wish I had kept were all the peace beads, because in the 1960s people made these and hung them at protests and it was a wonderful thing.

The hippie era was a wonderful time because we still believed we could make the world a better place.

The uproar of the late '60s - the antiwar movement, black riots, angry women. It was a wonderful time.

People are always wondering if I am an artist or political activist or politician. Maybe I'll just clearly tell you: Whatever I do is not art. Let's say it is just objects or materials, movies or writing, but not art, OK?

My mom had me at 16 and took me every place she went. I remember going on peace marches. She tried to take me to Woodstock - it was pouring rain. It was on my birthday, and I was crying so much in the car they turned the car around and dumped me at my grandmother's house... I had a little attitude.

Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration.

Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.

We did that with people like Chris Rock, Woody Harrelson, and the environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill.

I loved the Woody Guthrie tradition of speaking about what's happening to the country.

I've always been a big fan of how Woody Guthrie wrote political songs like 'This Land is Your Land.'

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

First it was the whites, and then their Negro message bearers. And the word was always the same: 'Tell your sons to take their names off the books. Don't show up at the courthouse voting day.'

You don't have to get into, 'I'm a leftist or a rightist, I'm Democrat or Republican.' You don't have to get into that kind of nitty gritty type of detail, but at the same time to show that you do have a stance is very, very important. To preach the good word of just being a good human being, being a humanitarian.

We didn't exist. Ronald Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until 1987. I've tried desperately to get a meeting in the White House; Gay Men's Health Crisis is already an established organization. I have a certain presence.

You have to be careful how you're using the word boycott.

We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat; I am the people.