Quotes About Activism

Black Power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

You have so much power to bring awareness, prevention and change.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

In the words of Frederick Douglas, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. We must be that demand. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience by Susan Pedersen,

My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.

Americans must rise up and make all in Washington DC unemployed.

On the other hand, I'm part of a movement which has a very, very ambitious goal of slowing down ... the American empire and keeping it from continuing to do the many terrible things it does all over the world. We have to reach the American public, and to do that we have to have access to the mass media.

Inspiring scenes of people taking the future of their countries into their own hands will ignite greater demands for good governance and political reform elsewhere in the world, including in Asia and in Africa.

Let Southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble—let their Northern apologists tremble—let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

Adams has shown a nearly inexhaustible desire, leavened with an equal amount of sheer talent- five decades' worth and counting- in an unrelenting effort to stabilize, strengthen, and improve the standing of indigenous peoples, minority groups, and the larger society as well. He is an exemplary Native activist, indeed.

It is not my place to offer pep talks, aphorisms, or dictums. But if I had to give one piece of practical advice it would be this: Find something that you love that they're fucking with and then fight for it. If everyone did that--imagine the difference. (50)

If only non-hypocrites are going to fight for the environment then it will be an army of none. (60)

While opposing injustice nonviolently, he (Gandhi) insisted, is always morally superior to opposing it violently, opposing injustice violently is still morally superior to doing nothing to oppose it at all.

Insofar as we have freedoms, it's not because some great wise Founding Fathers granted them to us. It's because people like us insisted on exercising those freedoms—by doing exactly what we're doing here—before anyone was willing to acknowledge that they had them.

politically, there is no better way to ensure people are not politically active or aware than to have them working, commuting to work, or preparing for work every moment of the day.

An SDS radical once wrote, "The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." In other words the cause - whether inner city blacks or women - is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.

What is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by students.

King told the student leaders not to forget that the struggle was justice versus injustice, not black versus white, and reminded them always to be open to compromise with local whites.

Gay liberation was not part of the Comparative Politics course, but Goldyn drew "a good-sized crowd" one evening during that term when he spoke on gay activism, and a column he wrote for the student newspaper ended by declaring that "the point of liberation, sexual or otherwise, is to rewrite the rules." Goldyn made a huge impact on Barry Obama.

If every American school taught the Bill of Rights in a clear and compelling way, if every child knew the fundamental rules that guide the relationships between the individual and the state, then every citizen would eventually feel the reflexive need to resist every violation. We had better begin now, for rights that are not invoked are eventually abandoned.

Young people are meant to go off the rails politically, aren't they? And there are certainly far worse things one can do than dream about equality.