Quotes by Activists - Page 22

We cannot escape our origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key -could we but find it- to all we later become
James Baldwin
In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals.
Mahatma Gandhi
Love your body, love your sexuality, and realize that you are a bad human being only if you are unkind and cruel and do harm unto others and not because of your sex life.
Roxana Shirazi
Dualism::In Ralph Ellison's Invisible ManI am outside of history. i wish i had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in the cage.i am outside of history. its hungrier than i thot.
Ishmael Reed
Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must—if we are really to live at all, if we are to enjoy the life more abundant promised by the Sages of Wisdom—we must put our convictions into action. My remuneration has been that I have been privileged to act out my faith.
Margaret Sanger
Real problems can't be fixed with a motivational poster, a cute quote or a pat on the back.
Bryant McGill
Most of your problems exist because your heart is hard and you are being arrogant.
Bryant McGill
In any event, the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems. These have been dealt with, when they have been dealt with at all, out of necessity—and in political terms, anyway, necessity means concessions made in order to stay on top.
James Baldwin
Shall I tell you something I've been noticing? The mistrust this society has for women. All kinds of experts and officials are terrified because so many women are working. They really think that women have to be coerced into having babies and raising kids.
Marge Piercy
Take this one in my belly. He (or she) is determined to be here. I can feel the force of his being. It's as if he has something to do here and just wants to arrive and grow up so he can get to it.
Rebecca Walker
I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?
Rebecca Solnit
I really admired other parents I saw running around with their kids. I thought, "How nice is that for their children?" But they also left me racked with guilt--until one mother, out of the dozens I met, told me I shouldn't feel bad. "You're not your daughter's playmate," she said, and I nearly burst out in tears, because I needed to hear that so badly.
Leah Remini
I don't recognize her. This is not the woman I knew so round and made-up with her hair always a wavy jet black! I stay back until she opens her arms to me - this strange and familiar woman - her voice hoarse, "¡Ay mi'jita!" Instinctively, I run into her arms, still holding back my insides. "Don't cry. Don't cry", I remember. "Whatever you do, no llores." But my tía had not warned me about the smell, the unmistakable smell of the woman, mi mamá, el olor de aceite y jabón and comfort and home. "Mi mamá." And when I catch the smell I am lost in tears, deep long tears that come when you have held your breath for centuries.
Cherríe L. Moraga
The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me through the years and given my life such a firm foundation that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.
Margaret Sanger
Boggle with sex addicts is up there with go-kart racing with junkies.
Russell Brand
If you want more opportunities you have to become an opportunity for others. As you advance yourself your opportunities advance too.
Bryant McGill
Want and belief in lack shrink your opportunities.
Bryant McGill
Opportunity will always meet you exactly where you stand.
Bryant McGill
Every insult is an opportunity.
Bryant McGill
Being told you are wrong or insulted, gives you an opportunity to practice decency and having a non-response internally.
Bryant McGill
Being insulted offers you an opportunity to practice decency and having a non-response internally.
Bryant McGill
The power of getting to know one another is so immense, eclipsed only by first getting to know ourselves.
Bryant McGill
Connecting with yourself and knowing yourself is a monumental and life changing event.
Bryant McGill
Find comfort in questioning yourself.
Bryant McGill
I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink.I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken--a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them.
Cory Doctorow
Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.
Bryant McGill
Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers.
Laurie Matthew
The secret is in realizing your internal gifts and then setting them free.
Bryant McGill
Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.
Mahatma Gandhi
Rationalizing him and the glass pipe, Dad smoked crack, but he was not a crackhead; it was just something he did. To do something didn't define you, I thought.I saw Dad through a dusty lens that distorted our relationship, as tarnished as his pipe. He was no longer just our father; he was his own person, with an identity and label and body separate from his relationship with us. He was someone who was judged outside of the lens of fatherhood, outside of our connection. When he was in the streets, he was not Dad. He was Charlie the crackhead.
Janet Mock
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” I knew right then what I had to do. I went straight home, got down on my knees and prayed...
Shelley Lubben
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrow. -Isaiah 53: 4 (NASB)
Shelley Lubben
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. -John 8: 32
Shelley Lubben
People blame their lack of success on problems that they face. If they could only realize those problems are their opportunities to prove themselves.
Shelley Lubben
I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.
Elie Wiesel
In their quest to hit cloud Nine, our young men and women intheir prime are gradually finding themselves on ground Zero,emotionally battered, academically bankrupt and medicallyparalyzed.
Oche Otorkpa
To have our needs met, to love, to be loved, to feel safe in this world and to each know our purpose, is a simple matter of creating those blessings for others.
Bryant McGill
The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance. What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.
Glenn Close
I believe sarcasm is the passive form of rudeness and should not be tolerated in the Body of Christ.
Sean Feucht
If you are rude, cynical, habitually-sarcastic or pessimistic, your life options are going to be very limited.
Bryant McGill
We live in a country where our young ladies who have recently attained the age of puberty cannot afford sanitary pads, but our men and women in public offices have ipads which they do not even know how to use.
Patrick L.O. Lumumba
Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.
Nelson Mandela
Lead from the front — but don t leave your base behind.
Nelson Mandela
War is like night, she said. It covers everything.
Elie Wiesel
Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.
Elie Wiesel
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel
Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.
Elie Wiesel
This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.
Elie Wiesel
Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky.
Elie Wiesel
Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.
Elie Wiesel
One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.
Elie Wiesel
We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.
Elie Wiesel
Hate controls everything it touches, but love sets everything it touches free.
Bryant McGill
Nothing is impossible for pure love.
Mahatma Gandhi
Part of the problem was that I couldn't seem to get past the fact that I hadn't tried to escape from Kas. Even in France, when he'd left me on my own for several days, I'd carried on working [as a prostitute] and doing all the things he'd told me to d. And although I knew that it was because of the fear he'd so carefully and deliberately instilled in me, I still felt as though I'd somehow colluded in what had happened to me - despite knowing, deep down, that nothing could have been further from the truth.
Sophie Hayes
IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way so that you won’t notice the patterns and logic of his behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness.
Lundy Bancroft
One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.
Lundy Bancroft
THE MYTHS ABOUT ABUSERS1. He was abused as a child.2. His previous partner hurt him.3. He abuses those he loves the most.4. He holds in his feelings too much.5. He has an aggressive personality.6. He loses control.7. He is too angry.8. He is mentally ill.9. He hates women.10. He is afraid of intimacy and abandonment.11. He has low self-esteem.12. His boss mistreats him.13. He has poor skills in communication and conflict resolution.14. There are as many abusive women as abusive men.15. His abusiveness is as bad for him as for his partner.16. He is a victim of racism.17. He abuses alcohol or drugs.
Lundy Bancroft
But whether you stay or go, the critical decision you can make is to stop letting your partner distort the lens of your life, always forcing his way into thecenter of the picture. You deserve to have your life be about you; you are worth it.
Lundy Bancroft
Hiding my pain and acting strong, afraid to cry and show my tears, I struggle with all this years later.
Erin Merryn