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Social Justice Quotes

Browse 2520 quotes about Social Justice.

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Social Justice Quotes

“Why stay silent, why stay asleep, why - why - why - no more - no more - wake up, wake up from indifference, wake up from practicality, wake up from mystical moronism - wake up and take charge - take charge with conscience, courage and compassion - throw all nonsense of magic, dogma and habit overboard, and stand up with a fresh breeze of reason and clarity in your heart. Only then - I repeat, only then shall the world know true progress - only then shall the world know true humanity.”

HumanityProgressRevolutionSocial JusticeInjusticeHumanitarianIndifferenceReasoningHumanistSocial Reform
Book:Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live
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“Humanizing Democracy (A Sonnet) Dictatorship is rule of the cunning, Democracy is rule of the halfwits. Both are quite degrading for society, Cause neither of them is born of merits. Progress requires practice of reason, Immersed in a whole lot of love. But when the people prefer indifference, Society regresses down the savage curve. Character is the foundation of civilization, Yet that character is taken for granted. All talk and no walk has made us shallow, Separatism has made our soul tainted. So it’s time we feed values into democracy, While abolishing all populist fallacy.”

DemocracySocial JusticeIndifferenceNationalismDictatorshipBlack Lives MatterSonnetSocial DevelopmentPopulismMeritocracy
Book:Time to End Democracy: The Meritocratic Manifesto
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“Humans Are Defined (The Sonnet) Vegetables are defined, By the comfort they crave, Humans are defined, By the obstacles they brave. Absence of obstacles, Is not a sign of achievement. Absence of obstacles, Indicates a lack of movement. Even the mountains bow, But not for self-absorbed snobs. Oceans part making way, Only for those not afraid of storms. Awake, arise o soldier of valiance and valor. Sleep not, slacken not, the world is in your care.”

CourageRevolutionAchievementSocial JusticeHumanitarianBraveheartValorReformerSelfless ServiceHumanist Poetry
Book:Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier
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“Giants in Jeans Sonnet 20 Who’s the saint, who’s the tyrant, Is not determined by the show of strength. Real mark of human character, Lies in your gentleness radiant. The strongest souls on earth, Keep their strength hidden unless needed, Whereas the shallow and the entitled, Walk around trotting over the hearts of the helpless. Turning the other cheek to the oppressor, May work in a world of fairies. In our primitive world of organic apes, Turning the other cheek means aiding inhumanities. Love is the only answer, there is no question, But it is a lover's duty to stand up to oppression.”

CharacterStrengthSocial JusticeHumanitarianOppressionAccountabilitySonnetLove Thy NeighborBook Of PoemsTurn The Other Cheek
Book:Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth
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“The same patriarchy that oppresses women oppresses nonhuman animals. Farmed animals and “housewives,” “lab” animals and prostitutes, dancing bears and girls in the sex trade—all have too long been exploited by the same patriarchal hierarchy wherein the comparatively weak are exploited for the benefit of the powerful. Those who are aware of history, of patriarchy and of the feminist movement, tend to understand how difficult it is—and how important—for people to rethink basic behaviors in order to bring about deep and lasting change. We must rethink how we speak, how we spend our time, and what we consume. This is as true for fighting sexism as it is for fighting speciesism—or any other form of domination, exploitation, and oppression. We must change our lives first, and most fundamentally. I hope that readers working to improve the lives of girls and women . . . will realize that they can and must choose not to continue to exploit nonhuman animals while working to liberate girls and women.”

WomenChangeSocial JusticeOppressionGirlsExploitationPatriarchyIntersectionalitySpeciesismActivsim
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“We must acknowledge and take responsibility for the conflicts we have helped to create, and act to create real change. That, after all, is the true hallmark of democracy--a commitment to justice, honest self-appraisal, and action--even when it means challenging ourselves and the political institutions we hold most dear.”

GovernmentTruthPoliticsJusticeResponsibilityDemocracyHonestHonestyConflictSocial JusticePolitics QuotesGet InvolvedGovernment QuotesConflict ResolutionTake ActionPolitics Of The United StatesJustice QuotesDemocracy In AmericaResponsibility QuotesTake Action QuoteTake ResponsibilitySelf AppraisalCreate Change
Author:DaShanne Stokes
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“To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".”

ChangeSocial JusticeJazzUnityIndividualityImproveCritical ReflectionJazz Freedom Fighter
Book:Race Matters
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“Women who were lesbians, of all races and classes, were at the forefront of the radicalization of contemporary female resistance to patriarchy in part because this group had their sexual preference already placed themselves outside the domain of heterosexist privilege and protection, both in the home and in the workplace. No matter their class, they were social outcasts.”

PovertyFeminismSocial JusticeClassism
Book:Where We Stand: Class Matters
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“The little stone Saint and the Goblin got on very well together, though they looked at most things from different points of view. The Saint was a philanthropist in an old fashioned way; he thought the world, as he saw it, was good, but might be improved. In particular he pitied the church mice, who were miserably poor. The Goblin, on the other hand, was of opinion that the world, as he knew it, was bad, but had better be let alone. It was the function of the church mice to be poor.”

FunnyPovertyHumourMoralitySocial JusticeWitSatirePhilanthropyEdwardian
Book:Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
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“Thus when people object, as they do, to me and others pointing out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer—by commenting that wealth is not finite, that statist and globalist solutions and handouts will merely strip the poor of their human dignity and vocation to work, and that all this will encourage the poor toward a sinful envy of the rich, a slothful escapism, and a counterproductive reliance on Caesar rather than God—I want to take such commentators to refugee camps, to villages where children die every day, to towns where most adults have already died of AIDS, and show them people who haven't got the energy to be envious, who aren't slothful because they are using all the energy they've got to wait in line for water and to care for each other, who know perfectly well that they don't need handouts so much as justice. I know, and such people often know in their bones, that wealth isn't a zero-sum game, but reading the collected works of F. A. Hayek in a comfortable chair in North America simply doesn't address the moral questions of the twenty-first century.”

FaithChristianityPovertySocial JusticeTheologyAdvocacyWealth GapSocial Gospel
Book:Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
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“...the capital city had grown in alarming fashion: cardboard walls, tin roofs, people in rags clearly visible along the road from the airport. Since this made a very bad impression on visitors, for a long time the solution was to put up walls to hide them. As one politician said, 'Where there is poverty, hide it.”

PovertyConscienceSocial Justice
Book:My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
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“Throw the bums out" and "Drain the swamp" are popular political slogans. But it's not enough to move people around in a bureaucracy if you don't change the underlying values and let those values reshape tactics and procedures.”

JusticePovertySocial JusticePolice BrutalityNon FictionRacism In AmericaImprisonmentBaltimoreYouth Affected By Poverty
Book:Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
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“Some critics will counter that poverty is a choice made by those that are lazy or who lack the desire to change their loves for the better. I agree that poverty is a choice. But that choice is not made by the people who live under its oppressive effects. Rather, the choice is ours. It's the choice of government that represents our priorities and allocates our investments. Its a choice reinforced by the companies we patronize and the organizations we support.”

JusticePovertySocial JusticePolice BrutalityNon FictionRacism In AmericaImprisonmentBaltimoreYouth Affected By Poverty
Book:Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
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“(his) actions also underscore the limits of symbolic gestures toward social justice that we also often see in the world of philanthropy. We often pay homage to what needs to change and attempt half measures, but we rarely challenge our own complicity in the structural inequities.”

JusticePovertySocial JusticePolice BrutalityNon FictionRacism In AmericaImprisonmentBaltimoreYouth Affected By Poverty
Book:Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
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“The truth is that our individual efforts are important but insufficient. Our collective action -- the leaders we elect, the institutions administered in the name of the People, the other stanchions at the table --- offers an opportunity for bigger, longer-lasting action.”

JusticePovertySocial JusticePolice BrutalityNon FictionRacism In AmericaImprisonmentBaltimoreYouth Affected By Poverty
Book:Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
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“Those working in slaughterhouses, for example, are often underpaid and overworked, lack insurance, and are required to use dangerous equipment without adequate training. Turnover and rates of injury for jobs in anymal industries are among the highest in the United States. Slaughterhouse employees are almost always poor, they are often immigrants, and they are inevitably viewed by their employers as expendable. Moreover, if we would not like to kill pigs, hens, or cattle all day long, then we should not make food choices that require others to do so. Our dietary choices determine where others work. Will our poorest laborers work in fields of green or in buildings of blood? Fieldwork is difficult, but I worked in the fields as a child, and I am very glad that I never worked in a slaughterhouse.”

CompassionPovertyEthicsSocial JusticeImmigrantsVeganismFieldworkSlaughterhouse
Book:Animals and World Religions
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“Another critical religious motivation for reconsidering diet is concern for human suffering—out of compassion—in light of poverty, malnutrition, and starvation. . . . Not only do we damage the environment with our choice of cheese and cutlets—burdening future populations with pollutants, dead zones, and global climate change—but we also feed tons of precious grains to hundreds of thousands of cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys while fellow human beings go without food. Food energy is wasted when we cycle grains through anymals. Rather than breed hungry cattle and chickens to consume grains, we should stop breeding anymals and feed precious grains to those who are already starving. If we did not breed and consume anymals, billions of tons of grains could be redirected to feed hungry human beings, alleviating and/or preventing starvation worldwide.”

ReligionCompassionPovertyEnvironmentSocial JusticeClimate ChangeStarvationMalnutritionAnymals
Book:Animals and World Religions
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“...a UBI is not a salve for a world of technological unemployment, or a powerful antipoverty measure, or a form of social dividend, or a way to boost the earnings of the working poor. Rather, it is all those things and more: a paradigmatic shift that would free people from having to do more work that they did not want to do at all. A UBI would, in essence, lop off the bottom of the psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs', where air, food, water, and shelter reside, with self-transcendence up at the other end. A UBI would give people the economic bandwidth to do what they wanted with their lives... Let the robots do the dirty work. Let the people do what they want.”

PovertySocial JusticeEqualityUniversal Basic IncomeUbi
Book:Give People Money: The Simple Idea to Solve Inequality and Revolutionise Our Lives
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“The smartest person to ever walk this Earth in all probability lived and died herding goats on a mountain somewhere, with no way to disseminate their work globally even if they had realised they were super smart and had the means to do something with their abilities. I am not keen on 'who are the smartest' lists and websites because, as Scott Barry Kaufman points out, the concept of genius privileges the few who had the opportunity to see through and promote their life’s work, while excluding others who may have had equal or greater raw potential but lacked the practical and financial support, and the communication platform that famous names clearly had. This is why I am keen to develop, through my research work, a definition of genius from a cognitive neuroscience and psychometric point of view, so that whatever we decide that is and how it should be measured, only focuses on clearly measurable factors within the individual’s mind, regardless of their external achievements, eminence, popularity, wealth, public platform etc. In my view this would be both more equitable and more scientific.”

SciencePovertyCreativityGeniusSocial JusticeInjusticeIntelligenceEqualitySmart PeoplePsychometrics
Author:Gwyneth Wesley Rolph
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“The essence of economic inequality is borne out in a simple fact: there are 400 billionaires in the United States and 45 million people living in poverty. These are not parallel facts; they are intersecting facts. There are 400 American billionaires because there are 45 million people living in poverty. Profit comes at the expense of the living wage. Corporate executives, university presidents, and capitalists in general are living the good life--because so many others are living a life of hardship.”

PovertySocial JusticeInequalityBlacklivesmatterLiving Wage
Book:From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
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