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Activism Quotes

Browse 1768 quotes about Activism.

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Activism Quotes

“When we heard at first [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away" because he resisted the government. Which ways have they thrown their lives, pray? —such would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by their enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not gain a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don’t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul—and what a soul!—when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than a quart of blood, but that is not the market heroes carry their blood to.”

JusticeActivismCivil WarJohn BrownAbolitionismHenry David Thoreau
Book:A Plea For Captain John Brown
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“All that is needed is to listen. The love song of the world enters our souls through the language of life. Our touchstone of strength forms the shape of our beloveds. Courage surges into our limbs. We rise. One foot steps in the direction of change. This is the Love that thrusts the world through eternity and carries us forward into the infinity of tomorrow. It sings overhead, scouring the barriers of reality, looking for an opening.”

LoveSocial JusticeActivismResistanceResistance Movement
Book:The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -
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“How can you not be involved? These are your times, your world, even if those events are on the other side of it. And as for the narrative--you are a part of that, for better or for worse, whether the grey inexorable economic inevitabilities--recessions and recoveries and having less money or more--or the grand perilous global story.”

InterestNewsActivismInvolvementCurrent Events
Book:Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time
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“86% if the powerful outlaw life; if they ban love, if they constrict liberty with unjust laws . . . then the dandelions must leap up in defiance, in numbers too vast to suppress, with persistence too determined to stop. And why should they wait for violent means to achieve such a goal, when they could embody that world today?”

LoveFreedomLibertySocial JusticeActivismResistance
Book:The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -
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“Home was within.
 Home was without.
 Home was here and now. 
Home was everything that already was and always is. There were so many chases and trips, and directions and events and places and experiments, and relationships all searching and never finding.
It wasn't anything I ever expected. It wasn't anywhere I expected it. Or with who. It didn't come into being by me doing anything. It simply existed within my heart space, when I could look at and be with and face my fear, knowing it was only an illusion to keep me from seeing the truth.
The truth of myself. In love. 
Eyes wide open.
 Home.”

LoveHomeActivismSelf Realization
Book:The Bare Melcessities: Walking Out. Waking Up. Getting Bare
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“But we must accept one central truth and responsibility as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”

GovernmentWorkFreedomDemocracyActivismAmerican Government
Book:Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
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“I know the concern over the events in our nation doesn't end at our borders. Because there are no borders, really, if you think about it. Everything we do on this planet has repercussions that reverberate around the world. Because we're connected. We belong to each other. And we need each other. We will get through this. Together. And we'll learn and grow and overcome. Together. I believe the good things in this world outnumber the sad. And I believe the good people outnumber the bad. We are the lights sparkling in the darkness, and our hope and love are going to set the world on fire. I believe in us.”

HumanitySocial JusticeEqualityActivismBordersNationInhumanityGlobal Responsibility
Author:L.R. Knost
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“Challenging boundaries is not simply social rebellion. It is the catalyst of social evolution. When systems go unchallenged, they grow complacent and corrupt. Raising generation after generation of rule followers and conformists may be more convenient for society, but it inevitably leads to tyranny and, ultimately, revolution. Raising independent thinkers, conscious objectors, and peaceful activists creates a social balance that can endure. Peaceful parenting, then, by its very nature, is socially responsible because it creates the catalysts of social evolution that protect our society from the complacency and corruption that lead to tyranny and revolution.”

SocietyFeminismRevolutionSocial JusticeParentingActivismTyrannyChildGlobal Responsibility
Author:L.R. Knost
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“It is important for upcoming activists to study American history, as well as political and philosophical thought. It is unlikely that what you hope to accomplish is new. Current activism is almost always linked to the history of revolution worldwide, and Americans have a special connection to this legacy because our nation was born out of the struggle against tyranny.”

ChangeRevolutionActivismCivil RightsAmerican HistoryActivists
Book:Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
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“We are our own asteroid. Our consumption of fossil fuels has released--is releasing--a store of carbon into the atmosphere that has been accumulating for hundreds of millions of years. Corals, plankton, predators: everything in the ocean is screaming at us to stop. If we don't listen and take action right now, we could be witnesses to the death of most life on earth. We will be the cause of that death... We will have erased ourselves in a blink of geologic time.”

RevolutionActivismGlobal WarmingExtinctionSharksSharkwaterRob StewartRiprobstewart
Book:Save the Humans
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“I guess you hate the people most who make justifiable demands. Because they go to the heart of our psyche. We know they are right, and therefore, we have to destroy them if we can. I think a lot of people are really afraid of justifiable Indian claims to land and resources. They're most afraid of the fact that the claims are morally right, because when you are confronted with a moral imperative against an immoral imperative on your part, you've got to hate the people who assert that moral imperative...We hate them because their claims are totally justified--and we know it.”

Human RightsActivismNative AmericanAmerican IndianIndigenous Peoples
Author:Mary Crow Dog
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“Our individual power to effect change may not seem like much, but remember, we are all interconnected: We are One. Powerlessness itself is an illusion. Every positive action we take, no matter how small, will have an impact.”

ChangePowerClimate ChangePositivityActivismActionsInterconnectedness
Book:The One Idea That Saves The World: A Call to Conscience and A Call to Action
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“Gender is just one of many systems of oppression. The ultimate goal is to see how all systems are tied in a knot with the others and untie, unravel the knots of oppression. It's a spiritual journey more than a governmental one. It's about asking ourselves, 'Is this culture stopping me or anyone else from the free expression of sex and gender?' and if so, we have to act.”

FeminismGenderActivism
Book:Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us
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“No anti-slavery crusader aimed for a partial solution or settled on a regimen of interim targets. The fight to end slavery was a fight to end 100 percent of slavery for all time. In just that way, we can't settle for partial measures if we are going to win the war for our world. We need to fight for 100 percent sustainability, now.”

RevolutionActivismGlobal WarmingSustainabilityConservationEnvironmentalismSharkwaterRob StewartRiprobstewart
Book:Save the Humans
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“The vision of the ideal life that we've been taught in the West, which is gaining ever more purchase in China and India and elsewhere, feeds the system we need to undo. Go to school in order to get a degree in order to get a job in order to earn money so you can try to buy happiness because your life sucks, then retire and die: this is not meaningful living.”

RevolutionActivismSustainabilityConservationEnvironmentalismSharkwaterRob StewartRiprobstewart
Book:Save the Humans
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“In the South, we knew our adversary would stop at nothing to silence our activism. We knew we could never match his readiness to annihilate our resistance. So we ceded him that ground and challenged him instead to defend himself against the work of loving peace.”

LovePeaceViolenceSouthActivismCivil RightsRace RelationsCivil Rights MovementSocial MovementsSouthern United States
Book:Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
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“The word “activist” conjures images of sit-ins, people circulating petitions and raising money and marching and organizing and meeting, and getting people to the polls. But it also means doing research, starting businesses, making loans, and changing one’s diet. When people creatively act on their moral intuition, all kinds of things happen. The world of activism is very big, diverse, and dynamic. And it requires—and helps us along in—transcending the collective trance.”

Activism
Author:Terry Patten
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“If this past election and our present political, social, and environmental upheavals have done nothing else, they have inspired a new generation of thinkers. From poets to activists to journalists to scholars, the raw and gritty realities we face as a nation and as global citizens are being exposed, dissected, and examined. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and the right to peacefully protest are not the luxuries of a free society, they are the defenders,supporters, and protectors of a free society. They are what make a free society possible. The solutions to our problems will no doubt be lengthy, complex, and difficult, but a generation awakened from the lethal sleep of apathy is a beginning. And that offers true hope for our future.”

GovernmentHopeFreedomDemocracySocietyPoetFutureActivismWriterApathy
Author:L.R. Knost
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“If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

AngryActivismMarchBitternessCivil Rights Movement
Author:Maya Angelou
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