Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Activists - Page 18

There is something in this world that every individual can do. God has created all of us with something unique to contribute.

Profiling any segment of society and viewing them as a threat is a sign of intolerance.

A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries.

Politicians always think they know what people feel. It's a fallacy, because there is no such thing as 'the people.' It is a discursive device for summoning the people that you want. You're constructing the people, you're not reflecting the people.

The World Bank is now the biggest culprit in the debt crisis.

I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.

Peace in the world is everybody's business, no matter where you live or what you do.

A world where everyone creates content gets confusing pretty quickly without a good search engine.

After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life - and that proved hard. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising.

We came to know each other in war, and in war we continue.

Anyone with a child knows that children learn about the world through binary options: up or down, hot or cold, big or little, inside or outside, wet or dry, good or bad, boy or girl, man or woman.

I found myself trying to be all things to all people. I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility and the pressure of expectation.

Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.

Liturgy and worship were never meant to be confined to the cathedrals and sanctuaries. Liturgy at its best can be performed like a circus or theater - making the Gospel visible as a witness to the world around us.

Feminism is like any female-dominated group - a perpetual catfight.

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.

President Clinton not only benefits by gay and lesbian votes, but he benefits by showing the nation that he is a strong leader who implements his beliefs, who stands firm by those who he believes are being treated unfairly, and I think people respect that kind of leadership in the country.

Independence is happiness.

The feminist movement is not about success for women. It is about treating women as victims and about telling women that you can't succeed because society is unfair to you, and I think that's a very unfortunate idea to put in the minds of young women because I believe women can do whatever they want.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

Leadership is about encouraging women to break their silence and tell their stories to the world.

We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt.

There appears to be no limit as to how far the women's revolution will take us.

There is a thin line between politics and theatricals.

Opponents of legal birth control, including abortion, have tried for decades to play the race card, saying that legal abortion is racist. What they ignore is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966.

I care about facts. I don't care about your feelings.

In politics, there are no friends.

The AFL-CIO is a structure that divides workers' strength by allowing each union to organize in any industry, then bargain on its own, even when workers share a common employer.

Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

To me, it was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote.

In the Dolezal family, you couldn't always count on your parents to keep you safe.

Conservatives by and large believe in the corrective power of the free market above all. If we don't like how private companies are doing business, we should just start our own to compete, right?

I think my attitude has always been to put food on the table.

Strong people don't need strong leaders.

Getting toxic lead out of gasoline, the oil industry shouted, would cost a dollar a gallon. It turned out to cost just a penny a gallon to protect hundreds of thousands of kids from lead-induced brain damage.

Discussing and dissecting opposing viewpoints with others on Twitter opened up a whole new way of thinking for me.

Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.

At the time it seemed like there was a loosening of culture, there was a counterculture, there was a radicalization. I think we totally misread what was really going on in the world, that somehow a small group of people could mobilize a larger group of people.

I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all, if he gets up at night to go the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue.

Self-reliance is not always possible; we have to acknowledge that there are situations of dramatic crisis which will force us to substitute non-existing public delivery systems.

I took revenge on hardship from my earlier life by forgetting it.

In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

If Disney wants ideas for a princess, make her an independent woman, one who is not afraid to face the daily struggles of life, and refuses to wear expensive dresses. Because we all know life is messy, and those dresses are too pretty to get dirty.

Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.

I believe that schools of today with all their answers on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, above everything else, take us back to the industrial revolution in time, when people thought that nature could be conquered and consumption or production could be unlimited.

Socialism is a movement that loves a smear.

In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women's rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States.

Nothing in socialist doctrine argues for the abuse of power, from Thomas More, to Karl Marx, to Chavez, to Ocasio-Cortez. Historically, however, it has been the case that socialist countries often end up violently suppressing their citizens.

Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.

I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.

The union is much more than me, and when you think the union is you and it's not about who you represent, I think you've sort of lost your morals and focus and the purpose of your leadership.

When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail.

The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.

The consequences of turning a blind eye to government corruption go far beyond simply letting some corrupt politicians and bureaucrats walk free.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.

More humane societies are usually smaller, like the Scandinavian countries and Holland, where it is much easier to reach consensus and cooperation.