Quotes by Activists - Page 20

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.
Wilma Mankiller
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Nelson Mandela
A little man in a threadbare coat spoke up for the poor as if he really knew what he was talking about. The women with the flowers threw them down for him. “That’s Robert Speer,” one said. “Something like that. He’s our man.
Marge Piercy
No, It's not fair. But I was thinking more along the lines of the Pentagon and Washington itself. Sometimes I suspect that those who are running things might grow addicted to power. Secrecy's essential in wartime, but once in place, will it ever be removed?
Marge Piercy
Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we're not human... They don't hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.
Marge Piercy
In sum, one of the primary things I learned was how to kill time. I learned also to wish away my life. I learned to give myself away.
Derrick Jensen
The great thing about life-the most magnificent thing about being these sentient human beings-is that we have been given the power of choice.
Bryant McGill
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
Helen Keller
It happens to everyone and it happens fast.
Joseph Hansen
Today I am 65 years old. I still look good. I appreciate and enjoy my age. A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it. You still bring to bear all your prior experience, but you are riding on another level. It's completely liberating.
Nikki Giovanni
Your lowest moment and life can be your best if you survive it and learn from it
Brian Cuban
Some people are so addicted to their misery that they will destroy anything that gets in the way of their fix.
Bryant McGill
Addiction is just a little hiding place where sensitive people can go so we don't have to be touched by love or pain.
Glennon Doyle Melton
But Tilo had crept up on him, and become a kind of compulsion, an addiction almost. Addiction has its own mnemonics – skin, smell, the length of the loved one’s fingers. In Tilo’s case it was the slant of her eyes, the shape of her mouth, the almost ­invisible scar that slightly altered the symmetry of her lips and made her look defiant even when she did not mean to, the way her nostrils flared, announcing her displeasure even before her eyes did. The way she held her shoulders. The way she sat on the pot stark naked and smoked cigarettes. So many years of marriage, the fact that she was not young any more – and did nothing to pretend otherwise – didn’t change the way he felt. Because it had to do with more than all that. It was the haughtiness (despite the question mark over her ‘stock’, as his mother had not hesitated to put it). It had to do with the way she lived, in the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and seemed to have no consulates.
Arundhati Roy
The need to find out what will happen if I don't relent or moderate my actions has been a constant source of difficulty and discomfort in my life.
Russell Brand
The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.
Russell Brand
Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.
Russell Brand
Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light.
Bryant McGill
Sometimes the way to share your love is to let someone go.
Bryant McGill
The art is not one of forgetting but letting go
Rebecca Solnit
I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues. By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride.
James Baldwin
Let each of us lead a revolution of support in the lives of others.
Bryant McGill
Let us now yearn for the possibility of building a happiness in every heart. Let us now build inward a new world of hope, a world of limitless possibilities for the children of tomorrow, where each soul can reach the heights of their potential to love and to be loved.
Bryant McGill
I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.
Mahatma Gandhi
Instead of narrowing our allegiances to only include our favored nation, let us sing an anthem to the marvelous human being.
Bryant McGill
We must reprogram ourselves to understand that cooperation is a higher principle than competition.
Bryant McGill
The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers . . . The borders are open, folks! Come on in.
Arundhati Roy
We hear the saints saying: Our brother the world. We hear the revolutionaries: Dare we win?
Muriel Rukeyser
Hollywood is too busy trying to make old formulas hit the jackpot again to see the future. Hollywood is yesterday, forever catching up with what's happening today. This will change only when it becomes financially profitable, and reality will never be profitable until society overcomes its fear and hatred of difference and begins to see that we're all in this together
Vito Russo
Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer, until the story becomes at once more narrow and larger, more and more precise, more and more reverberating.
James Baldwin
The Constitution itself, the DNA of the country, can be altered by the collective will of the people, making America a self-evolving and self-writing program.
Bryant McGill
From generation to generation, America should never be the same country.
Bryant McGill
The political writer, then is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.
Cherríe L. Moraga
The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.
Walter Wink
We must resist in-group thinking and practice seeing every soul as a brother or sister in a larger grouping of humans on earth.
Bryant McGill
A world of fully developed individuals is immune to the cult of collectivism.
Bryant McGill
And we have the same colour eyes. When I look into his, I feel I'm looking into myself.
Alan Cumming
He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.
Arundhati Roy
Seek goodness and be goodness. Seek beauty and be beauty. Seek love and be love.
Bryant McGill
It is good to have a dream, as long as the dream does not have you.
Bryant McGill
Truth is the spirit of all that is good and worthy through loving.
Bryant McGill
The public good must come before private interests.
Bryant McGill
Any profession you engage in, no matter how profitable, unless it is truly helpful and good for others, is a crime against your soul, and the world.
Bryant McGill
Crisis is Good. Crisis is a Messenger.
Bryant McGill
The intimate space of your personal life should be reserved for amazing, beautiful, radiant souls — good, wholesome and loving people.
Bryant McGill
Being a good person has nothing to do with allowing people to destroy you.
Bryant McGill
Inside of every good person there is also something very wild.
Bryant McGill
You will never know anyone more intimately than yourself. Love yourself and be good to yourself.
Bryant McGill
If your attitudes are good, then your world will be better.
Bryant McGill
Don’taccept good things from bad people.
Malala Yousafzai
All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart.
James Baldwin
Because of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance, most people hate themselves and don't even know it.
Bryant McGill
I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.
Ingrid Betancourt
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
Maya Angelou
Troublemakers will infect you with the malady of their madness.
Bryant McGill
Minimalism means not trying to improve perfection.
Bryant McGill
When you demand perfection within yourself, you become more fallible.
Bryant McGill
Inner-calm will lead you on a beautiful journey back to your original self; the perfect, beautiful you.
Bryant McGill
If you want the perfect relationship, start with the one you have with yourself.
Bryant McGill
God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.
Simone Weil