Quotes About Activism

I wish that more of the celebrities, who are multi-millionaires, probably, are able to say to themselves, 'Wow, my communities are under attack, and I need to give back to my community.'

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can't or won't see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Sometimes I can tackle an issue -homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty - and wrap a good story around it. These are the best books, the ones with a story and a message.

I think that my peers deserve more than products to buy wrapped up in advertising. We need ideas to share and causes to believe in - opportunities to lead and teach.

Sometimes you have to put a wrench in the gears to get people to listen.

I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.

The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.

As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was OK to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.

I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

I was one of the first people in the Palestinian world, in the late 1970s, to say that there is no military option, either for us or for them, and I'm certainly the only well-known Arab who writes these things - and who writes exactly the same things in the Arab press that I say here.

The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.

Atheists' anger doesn't prove that we're selfish, or joyless, or miserable. It shows that we have compassion, and a sense of justice. We're angry because we see terrible harm all around us, and we feel desperately motivated to stop it.

I remember talking to a friend whose parents had been very involved in the civil rights movement. "They always said," he told me, "that you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.

There is also the fact that, unlike China, India is a democracy. Thus, Mumbai's robust activism functions as a brake on the drive to impose from above the fantasy of a global city.

It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

Teain had no difficulty generating the indignation of a satirist. He lack the patience of a reformer.

Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.

One of his black girlfriends did once persuade him to go on an anti-racist demonstration; and when the National Front yelled, Get back, Pakis! Chili, wearing a mink-coloured suit, had annoyed everyone by taking out his fat wallet, waving it at the racists and shouting, Get back to your council flats, paupers!

Revolutions always appear to succeed with amazing ease in their initial stages, and the reason is that those who supposedly "make" revolutions do not "seize power" but rather pick it up where it lies in the streets.

I have a tough stomach, and I've put myself through a lot. But when I first found out what happens to animals on modern factory farms and in today's slaughterhouses, I wanted to throw up - I literally couldn't believe it.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.