Quotes About Awareness

We cannot afford to be color-blind, we have to be color-brave.

We cannot pretend that reality is different from what it is.

But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.

We cannot afford to regard as normal the presence of injustice, inhumanity, and violence, including their verbal and cyber manifestations.

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.

We walk ourselves into ruts so deep we cannot see over them.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.

We cannot do everything in Africa, but doing nothing is not an option.

Can we ignore what is going on around us, can we disconnect ourselves, our own material situation, our spiritual selves, who we are, can we disconnect that from history and the social context of our lives? The older I get, the more I'm convinced that we cannot, that we are social creatures.

I guess I strongly feel that we cannot pretend that the Third World is not part of our world. We cannot say 'OK, there's that problem over there, let's just close our eyes' - we cannot do that.

We cannot stop what we cannot see.

We cannot be indifferent to people's life and business.

We should be uncomfortable with the growing gaps in our society, and we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to these injustices.

We cannot stay enveloped in our own reality and turn a blind eye to the plight of others.

Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward.

I think that once you fully understand the climate and ecological emergencies, then you know what you can do as well. And, of course, there's a lot of things you can do in your everyday life, but we cannot be focusing on these individual things you can do. We have to see the full picture.

We cannot comfort ourselves with the idea that young people will take a greater interest in our politics as they establish themselves in a job, in their communities or in their family life.

We cannot just say there is a homelessness crisis in San Francisco and continue moving at our normal pace.

We cannot just be nonracist. We really do need to be antiracist.

I have three kids. Now they're all grown up, but when they were little, every time I would start a new project, they would say, 'So dad, are you making a movie we can watch or one we cannot watch?' That's the kind of stuff they would ask. People around me - family and friends - usually know when to watch and when not to watch.

Black lives do matter. We cannot be afraid to say it, so I'll say it again: Black lives do matter.

Why harass with eternal purposes a mind to weak to grasp them?

If our psychology seems crude and weak in what it can say about the great human experiences, it is better to make that clear and to mark where we must go than to ignore it.

Some people are weak in their faith and testimonies but are not even aware of how precarious their situation is. Many of them likely would be offended at the suggestion.