Quotes About Activism

It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon; no time for any campus Oedipa knew of to be jumping, yet this one was. She came downslope from Wheeler Hall, through Sather Gate into a plaza teeming with corduroy, denim, bare legs, blonde hair, hornrims, bicycle spokes in the sun, bookbags, swaying card tables, long paper petitions dangling to earth, posters for undecipherable FSM's, YAF's, VDC's, suds in the fountain, students in nose-to-nose dialogue.

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole

A third major premise of the civil rights vision is that political activity is the key to improving the lot of those on the short end of differences in income, "representation" in desirable occupations or institutions, or otherwise disadvantaged.

It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.

The end goal is to create a new reality on the ground in which women have no real ability to exercise a right that they are supposedly guaranteed.

As the historian and author Randall Balmer writes, "It wasn't until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right's real motive: protecting segregated schools."33

the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right's real motive: protecting segregated schools.

Multiple studies show that increased contraceptive access, including better insurance coverage policies, over-the-counter availability, and comprehensive sex education, dramatically reduces rates of both unintended pregnancy and abortion. If antiabortion activists were truly interested in lowering abortion rates, they would champion such measures. Instead, they support measures that interfere with access.

I'm a child of the '60s. I went to medical school as a vehicle for social change.

I would argue that without social media and the internet, the Catalan independence movement could not possibly have progressed so far in such a short space of time, and even with the same chain of political events, levels of pro-independence activism and voter support would have been much lower at this stage.

Heroic acts aren't just about running into a burning building to save someone. It's also rising up and saying, "No, I will not let my brothers and sisters be treated this way or the community that I live in harm the vulnerable.

I hate those movies, those books, where some guy gets to go off and have adventures and meanwhile the girl has to stay home and wait. I'm a feminist. I subscribe to Bust magazine, and I watch Buffy reruns. I don't believe in that kind of shit.

If you accept the unacceptable without being angry, then there is something wrong with you.

The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society's weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.

Jesus reveals salvation, as the Marxist critic and occasional atheist Terry Eagleton observes, to be a matter not 'of cult, law and ritual', but of 'feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrants, visiting the sick, and protecting the poor, orphaned and widowed from the violence of the rich'.

The other was that all the major civil rights organizations, new as well as old, were committed to the philosophy of non-violence, the doctrine preached by the most conspicuous leader in the Negro movement, Martin Luther King. 'We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer,' he told the whites, 'and in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.

it is rare, though, that a great wrong is committed by one people against another without some among the perpetrators protesting the deed.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

One of my earliest memories is of my father carrying me in one arm with a picket sign in the other.

I'd like to one day be featured on a list of inspirational people who have made a difference in the world, whether it be helping underprivileged people or putting an end to the poaching of wildlife in Africa.

Kids feel so strongly about what's going on today and what's happening to the world, and that's very inspiring. I feel more hopeful than ever before about the future.

Bitch is just another word for feminist!

The maintenance of high standards of behavior in nonviolent action is necessary at all stages of the conflict.