Quotes by Activists - Page 12

Sexism is often an invisible problem. This is partly because it's so frequently manifest in situations where the only witnesses present are victim and perpetrator.
Laura Bates
The incidents that go unwitnessed definitely help to keep sexism off the radar, and unacknowledged problem we don't discuss. But so too do the regular occurrences that hide in plain sight, within a society that has normalized sexism and allowed it to become so ingrained that we no longer notice or object to it. Sexism is a socially acceptable prejudice and everybody is getting in on the act.
Laura Bates
When we suggest victims can stop rape, we also (however unintentionally) imply that rape is an inevitable aspect of life rather than an action deliberately carried out by a perpetrator.
Laura Bates
As long as we as a society continue to belittle and dismiss women's accounts, disbelieve and question their stories, and blame them for their own assaults, we are playing right into the hands of those who silence victims by asking: "who would believe you anyways?".
Laura Bates
The very fact that it is necessary in the twenty-first century to explain why it's not okay to publicly debate whether or not women are "asking" for sexual assault is mind-boggling.
Laura Bates
This combination of ageism and sexism was also blatant in the Boston Herald's treatment of sixty-three-year-old Elizabeth Warren, whose 2012 Senate bid it sought to undermine by repeatedly dubbing her "Granny" in its pages, as if to imply that an older woman could not possibly be trusted with political responsibility.
Laura Bates
One day, in the very early months of the project, I read several entries in a single week from girls who had been subjected to leering and shouting from men in the street while walking home from school in their uniforms. Dismayed, I posted a question on Twitter: Surely, I asked, this couldn't be a common occurrence? By the end of the day, a deluge of hundreds of tweets had confirmed that the experience was not only common but almost ubiquitous.
Laura Bates
Girls are not only being denied access to scientific and adventurous toys, they're also presented with such a narrow range of options that domesticity and stereotypically "female" duties are shoved down their throats before they've even reached the age of five.
Laura Bates
Disbelief is the first great silencer.
Laura Bates
If it would destroy [a 12-year-old boy] to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?
Tony Porter
Silencing women silences justice.
DaShanne Stokes
Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.
Andrea Dworkin
It is the very thing I thought I could never be that the real me has settled into like a puzzle. Who would have thought I could be me?
Malebo Sephodi
I don't think you have ever really inhabited a city until you have walked down the street and seen every single person, no matter how unlikely or different from yourself, how disheveled or foreign, as a potential ally or recruit.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Remember: Oppression thrives off isolation. Connection is the only thing that can save us.
Yolo Akili
It is man's social nature which distinguishes him from the brute creation. If it is his privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent. Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained.
Mahatma Gandhi
There is a deep interconnectedness of all life on earth, from the tiniest organisms, to the largest ecosystems, and absolutely between each person.
Bryant McGill
Because of our interconnectedness we all know that extreme poverty and exclusionary practices are violations against the basic dignity of people.
Bryant McGill
Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent. Whereas other cities flaunt there history - their presumed glory - in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx.
James Baldwin
I once started outto walk around the worldbut ended up in Brooklyn,that Bridge was too much for me.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.
Helen Keller
The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year.
James Baldwin
Life is a game that you win when you solve the puzzle of yourself.
Bryant McGill
Now I realized that me and him were just alike. We were both born to win. And, when we were not winning, it was OK 'cause we were busy planning to win.
Sister Souljah
The need for gain, and advantage over others, is one of the chief driving forces behind all human misery.
Bryant McGill
If your life is a miserable disaster, you might want to consider, that it's because you are doing something wrong.
Bryant McGill
The false world is full of illusions and misery.
Bryant McGill
If you are miserable you grow in misery and if you are joyful you grow in joy.
Bryant McGill
It’s hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.
Shane Claiborne
Endless dreams are forever waiting, whereas success is, and does.
Bryant McGill
When you are constantly waiting and wanting your declaration is that you are NOT.
Bryant McGill
There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream.
Maya Angelou
(backpacker having conversation with Lizzie the Australian main character)Backpacker: 'What's the drinking age in Australia?''eighteen''is that enforced'Lizzie thought for a second before answering seriously, 'yes, they make us drink
Catherine Deveny
Our actions has ensured that we made headlines for all the wrong reasons
Oche Otorkpa
Inside of a ring or out, ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.
Muhammad Ali
Ammu's tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.
Arundhati Roy
Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.
Nikki Giovanni
People use words to do battle and to hurt one another terribly, tragically and even mortally.
Bryant McGill
Peace may be hard to achieve, but is possible with small yet essential steps that are guided by courage and sufficient commitment.
Widad Akreyi
We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Nature will survive us, we've been wrong after all. We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Wouldn't it be great to heal the world with only a song? (Sky is Over)
Serj Tankian
N O T H I N GI would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated?Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?y
Arundhati Roy
In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest.
Arundhati Roy
What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
Elie Wiesel
Removing the finish line is a useful tactic if your goal is to just keep running the race.
DaShanne Stokes
Be the tolerance you seek.
Bryant McGill
Be the compassion you seek.
Bryant McGill
There is one clear urgency in your life that you must never neglect, and that is — you must be yourself.
Bryant McGill
You always were beautiful, and you always will be beautiful.
Bryant McGill
Love is not about finding the right person, but about being the right person.
Bryant McGill
The ultimate form of attraction is to be what you want to attract.
Bryant McGill
We see the world as we are.
Bryant McGill
I am a haystack in a needle of time.
Bryant McGill
Be the love you seek.
Bryant McGill
Stop aspiring and start being. The world needs you!
Bryant McGill
I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.
Maya Angelou
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.
Helen Keller
Attachment to the external always suffocates inner peace.
Bryant McGill
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
Mahatma Gandhi
Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act.From Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars
Rivera Sun
The frozen flowers never go away. They hang around somewhere all the time. I think we need to talk about vases.Did you hear the sound of the white flower?
Arundhati Roy