Quotes About Activism

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

During the five years since the Party had been formed, it always seemed that time was measured not in days or months or hours but by the movements of comrades and brothers in and out of prison and by the dates of hearings, releases, and trials. Our lives were regulated not by the ordinary tempo of daily events but by the forced clockwork of the judicial process (330)

Hunter S. Thompson

This is old politicians, says Joel Swerdlow, the twenty-six-year-old who ran McGovern's operation in the North half of Milwaukee. We have precinct captains, ward leaders, car captains, the whole bit. That's the only way you win. But instead of patronage bosses and sewer commissioners, we've got young people who work because they're interested in the issues.

He renamed India's untouchables harijan, "God's people," and raised them to human stature. And in doing so he provided the nonviolent strategy as well as the inspiration for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s comparable civil rights movement in the United States. Gandhi

I'll be an activist of the emotions, a loud, campaigning spirit fighting with tears and sighs to shape institutions around my vulnerable self. My identity will be my precious, my only true posession, my access to the only truth.

There's a scene in 'Medium Cool' in which a young man walks by with a sign that says, 'Sanity, please.' If anything summarizes what I was feeling at that time, it is that sign.

As a young man, I was angry about all things legal.

After marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as a young man, John Lewis went on to become a legendary leader for civil rights alongside other giants of the movement like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

Young men in my day really stepped up... These were champions for freedom, equality, and justice for all human beings, and they were educated individuals that used their education and knowledge to represent their case.

The first thing I organized around was the Central Park Five case for the young men who were accused. We talked about the unfair misrepresentation of these young teenagers in the media. I've been fighting back against Donald Trump for a long time.

There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the same-sex marriage bill, my blood was boiling. I had been silent, but that night, Brad and I watched the news and saw all these young people pouring out on Santa Monica Boulevard venting their rage, and I said, 'I have to speak out.'

I am a beacon of hope to a vast number of young people and others who are still disillusioned and disgusted with the system.

I hope that young people will also look to politics as a vehicle to not only have their voices heard, but actually to be the change makers that they want to see. They are disaffected, understandably, but I hope that young people will not only turn out to vote but also run for office.

'Dreamers' was because I really wanted to go back after I heard so much nonsense about '68. I wanted to go back to what for me was '68, when young people thought that they could change the world.

Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all.

On the unofficial level it was a glorious moment in our national life because young people decided that this had to stop, that they could no longer stand the shedding of blood in this tragic adventure in Southeast Asia.

What's profound and exciting is the way young people are taking advantage of the fact that the Internet enables everyone to have a megaphone. It enables everyone to stand up and say, 'I deserve to be heard, and I demand that you listen.'

I tell young people to prepare themselves as best they can for a world that grows more challenging every day-get the best education they can, and couple that education with real-life experience in social justice work.

Young people have so much more power than they tend to think to be able to affect politics. And if people will organize and get involved and go out and knock on doors and hand out leaflets and make a change, then they can determine the future.

At first blush, it seems that the young people who were shot down in the parking lot at the base of Blanket Hill gave up their lives for a dream that died with them.

I founded the Me Too Movement because there was a void in the community that I was in. There were gaps in services. There was dearth in resources, and I saw young people - I saw black and brown girls - who are hurting and who needed something that just wasn't there.

My husband, Andrew Shue, is the co-founder of Do Something, and we both speak and present at awards ceremonies. It's absolutely amazing and humbling to see all the work so many young people are contributing to better their communities on both a local and global front.