Quotes by Activists - Page 4

I no longer look to my abusers with any expectation– of remorse, or apology or restitution or restoration or relationship. I’m at peace, accepting that they won’t and can’t help me out of the mess they created. But, I’m the best qualified for that job anyway and I’m happy with the job I’m doing.
Christina Enevoldsen
I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware and worthy of Your listening. I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance.They are modest, my prayers, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only implore You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together
Elie Wiesel
I saw a stop sign, and it occurred to me that just as no one expects a stop sign to stop a car, I shouldn’t expect words to substitute for experience. That’s not their job, although words certainly can be misused in that way. The job of words is to direct us toward experience, to round out experience, to facilitate experience, and to give us ways to share at least pale shadows of that experience with those we love. And the job of words is to help us learn to be — and act — human.
Derrick Jensen
In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.
Bryant McGill
What is the American fetish about highways?They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.But what is after them?They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress.
Ishmael Reed
In your serenity there is a clarity, strength and correctness that is beyond the petty scuffles of the moment — a greater truth. It is the truth of who you are; beautiful, calm, secure, open, willing and safe.
Bryant McGill
Political prisoners describe:- extreme physical and emotional torture- distortion of language, truth, meaning and reality- sham killings- begin repeatedly taken to the point of death or threatened with death- being forced to witness abusive acts on others- being forced to make impossible "choices"- boundaries smashed i.e. by the use of forced nakedness, shame, embarrassment- hoaxes, 'set ups', testing and tricks- being forced to hurt othersRitual abuse survivors often describe much the same things.
Laurie Matthew
We are sitting on top of a vast cultural and historical pyramid of accumulated misconceptions, lies and myths, built one on top of the other.
Bryant McGill
Raped at age nine by a relative and pregnant at 14 Oprah Winfrey,like many others have experienced the wickedness and brutality ofour society. Sadly, it’s an environment where blood lines no longerhold.
Oche Otorkpa
From New Delhi to New York, from Durban to Rio; women andgirls are been hunted down by rapists, abused by pedophiles andemotionally decapitated by a society that is becoming increasinglyhostile to the womenfolk
Oche Otorkpa
Health makes good propaganda.
Naomi Wolf
Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.
Maya Angelou
One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers—anyone who wants to work in the business. Your voice counts. Your vision matters.
Melissa Silverstein
He say, Celie, tell me the truth. You don't like me cause I'm a man?I blow my nose. take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss 'em, as far as I'm concern, frogs is what they stay.
Alice Walker
There are as many violent women as men, but there's a lot of money in hating men, particularly in the United States -- millions of dollars. It isn't a politically good idea to threaten the huge budgets for women's refuges by saying that some of the women who go into them aren't total victims.
Erin Pizzey
But why does it matter what we call it, as long as there is concerted action to respond to and prevent such crimes? It matters because if we really want to fix something that is broken, if we want to heal these fractures in our society, then we need to understand their causes. If we do not, then we will forever continue to place giant sticking plasters over the wounds left by this violence, trying to bandage over losses that can never be replaced. As long as this violence continues, it is obviously the case that we do have to address the symptoms, but my argument is that we must also address the causes if we want a long-term reduction or even, perhaps, the eventual eradication of male violence against women.
Finn Mackay
Having had nothing, I will not settle for crumbs.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together...
Lilla Watson
To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others.
Malebo Sephodi
How do I negotiate my way across life with a system that I find so violent yet it seems so normal to many others?
Malebo Sephodi
In nude protests, the very same body that is objectified and subjected to endless scrutiny and policing is used to reclaim power.
Malebo Sephodi
...the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork.
Rebecca Solnit
On top of dealing with the emotional trauma associated with conscious and unconscious recalling, you must deal with the possibility of no one believing you or making you doubt your experiences. When women speak out about their abusers, they have to deal with the police and society not believing them
Malebo Sephodi
Society is obsessed with women's bodies and I take my body back by doing whatever it is that I want to do with my body
Malebo Sephodi
It's actually such a tragedy that I live in a world that is inspired by me putting my body or mental state on the line
Malebo Sephodi
A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line.
Jaclyn Friedman
Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles...
Arundhati Roy
Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.
Arundhati Roy
Increasingly, the girl child is becoming an endangered specie aspedophiles’ continue to roam free in our societies terrorizingthe lives of our children and stripping them of all the joy andexcitement that comes with childhood.
Oche Otorkpa
Lovers remain in each other's energy fields for 21 days after intercourse. Renewed with each act. Do the math. Choose wisely... otherwise you're carrying that stink with you for a long time...Stop having sex right now!...All of you. Until you know you're not giving yourselves away." - Sheerah
Sharon Weil
As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: "What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Your attitudes are slowly shaping you at all times and calling your deepest truths to the surface of your reality.
Bryant McGill
If you can't be real and firm with others about who you are, you will be doomed to a phony, plastic bullshit existence, where you only live for others.
Bryant McGill
The world is awash with colours unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests.
Russell Brand
There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last.
David T. Dellinger
It is astounding what power being kind, mannered, polite and considerate has in transforming your life.
Bryant McGill
The secret to unseating great power, is not to move the other direction, but to compete directly against their goals.
Bryant McGill
People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.
Arundhati Roy
Those with unearned privileges often spin things as 'political correctness' to further silence those they wish to oppress.
DaShanne Stokes
The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, “Don’t forget to deal with this!” As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard.
Christina Enevoldsen
Real limitations can be reasonably challenged and expanded, but a hobbled mind is not going anywhere.
Bryant McGill
Changing your mind can move you into another dimension. Passages materialize exposing a hidden world that was there all along.
Bryant McGill
What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well.
Glenn Close
You do not respond to a mosquito bite with a hammer.
Patrick L.O. Lumumba
On Atheism – If people continue to think of atheism as a kind of religion, then I demand all the perks that real religions get. I want to build big empty buildings where like-minded people can gather once a week to debate a non-existent deity. I want tax-exempt status. I want real food, not cheap wine and crackers. I want a rocking band. I want altar men! Not altar boys—altar MEN—and I want them to look like the chain-clad guy who hands an envelope to RuPaul at the beginning of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”.
Marsha Hinds
Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
Pete Seeger
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou
I got a text from my husband. “Manal, you are divorced,” it read. “Your papers are in the court of Khobar.” I was divorced in my absence, just as I had been married.
Manal Al-Sharif
The victims of Ankara peace rally sacrificed their lives for peace and their only wish was We Want Peace.
Widad Akreyi
Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference.
Nelson Mandela
On the 25th anniversary of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, let us remember that we have a chance to save lives! If we don't take it, we may regret it!
Widad Akreyi
I wish we'd be able to deliver our message at the global level on the need to recognize the past genocides in order to prevent new ones. Our message of peace and justice will hopefully reach every corner of the world.
Widad Akreyi
I reiterate my dedication to advocating for effective preventive strategies to end gun violence once and for all. In the face of the rising tensions and the widespread proliferation of small arms and light weapons, we call on everyone to join us to build conditions that will make world peace more likely. We all know that the road to building peace goes through ending conflicts and silencing the guns.
Widad Akreyi
First, people should open their eyes to see structural sin, which is the very existence of a First and Third World. As long as there's a First World, there won't be peace because there won't be justice or sharing. (Pedro Casaldaliga, p. 243)
Mev Puleo
We must plant trees, grow gardens instead of lawns, ride bicycles when we can and support responsible local businesses over big brands.
Bryant McGill
Remind me that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.
Andrea Gibson
Privilege doesn't just insulate people from the consequences of their prejudice, it cuts them off from their humanity.
DaShanne Stokes
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You are not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
James Baldwin
Because books saved my life, literally, I've become close to them
Malebo Sephodi
Look within - there is no end!
Malebo Sephodi