Quotes About Activism

I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting. Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I begged her to let me go along.

My parents were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. My father was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker; my mother was a secretary with the Panthers.

When I was a young man, my mother said to me, 'You can't be a communist without being a militant atheist.' So I had to be a militant atheist because I wanted to be a communist.

In France it was Joan of Arc; in the Crimea it was Florence Nightingale; in the deep south there was Rosa Parks; in India there was Mother Teresa and in Florida there was Katherine Harris.

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California, where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line.

Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor.

My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.

[Barack Obama] and Michelle, in my heart, this is my personal feeling, epitomize what my mother and my father were. They are community organizers on a global level.

My mother was an activist so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

Good things don't come to those who wait. They come to those who agitate!

The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

We take a lot for granted as second wave feminists, what our mothers and aunts did for us.

With my music, I create change...I am using my music as a weapon.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

I want to be like Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and John Lennon... but I want to stay alive.

My music is made for the people who are willing to stand up to change this world themselves.

Bad presidents make for great music, and I'm gonna do my best to provide it.

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.

Music used to cause revolutions and I'm not seeing much revolution anymore.

My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance.

If you ever can bring about revolutionary changes, two things would be required: young people would have to be involved and you would need music.

Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it's not just a record, it's a movement.