Quotes by Activists - Page 46

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mahatma Gandhi
Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.
Helen Keller
When you succumb to cynicism, darkness, pessimism and sarcasm you are amplifying imbalance and negativity.
Bryant McGill
Your intelligence is a fire that can illuminate any darkness. Awaken and let your mind burn so brightly! You are alive for a reason!
Bryant McGill
To love your weakness, negativity and darkness is to accept half of who you are.
Bryant McGill
I think that I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was because I was smarter than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things in short words for mouthbreathers who just didn't get it.
Cory Doctorow
If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.
Barbara Ehrenreich
It's just going to add to him thinking that I am a crazy, wanky, greenie, hybriddriving hippie," I complained."Has he seen your bomb of a car?" Fran asked in disbelief. "Greenpeace arranges a protest every time it leaves your driveway.
Sean Kennedy
I would never have broken up with you," I said earnestly. "I'm more miserable without you than I am with you." As soon as that sentence came out I groaned, because I knew how bad it sounded.But Declan laughed. "Vintage Simon Murray comment.
Sean Kennedy
So, go. Travel far. Travel courageously. Travel young.
Alanda Kariza
I am both numb and oversensitive, overwhelmed by the need, the raw and desperate need of the girls I am listening to and trying to help. I'm overdosing on the trauma of others, while still barely healing from my own.I cry for hour at home and have fitful nights of little sleep. My nightmares resurface as my own pain is repeated to me, magnified a thousand times. It feels insurmountable. How can you save everyone? How can you rescue them? How do you get over your pain? How do you ever feel normal?
Rachel Lloyd
Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms.Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.
Laurie Matthew
Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do.Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them.[Published 2001]
Laurie Matthew
In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions.
Laurie Matthew
Progress and healing involves seeing every person as not so different from ourselves.
Bryant McGill
In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to:break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person & shape their will in order to...try and make the person one of them...thus gaining powerIf abusers hold all the power, becoming one of them can, for some, be the only means of survival. However, this doesn't always work, instead survivors often find ways of regaining their own power and fighting back.
Laurie Matthew
I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.
Rebecca Solnit
You think you can avoid [pain,] but you actually can't. If you do, you just get sicker, or you feel more pain. But if you can speak it, if you can write it, if you can paint it, it is very healing.
Alice Walker
Your body will heal itself, through gentle and peaceful cooperation with the inherent wisdom and intelligence within.
Bryant McGill
Guilt can interfere with our desires to move forward, to heal properly and to become a person who has the mental health and means of proper recompense.
Bryant McGill
Pain is like a healing emotional fever.
Bryant McGill
There is an intelligent healing process inside of you that knows how to absorb pain and transform it into wisdom.
Bryant McGill
The simple, humble, almighty, supreme virtue of love is the invincible fire of transformation for healing the world.
Bryant McGill
Your highest purpose and calling is often really calling for your own healing
Bryant McGill
Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.
Maya Angelou
When the storm rips you to pieces, you have to decide how to put yourself back together again.
Bryant McGill
If you avoid your truthful emotions and pain you will implode and contract into a diminished and feeble state.
Bryant McGill
Isolation is at the heart of all disease, therefore healing requires community and the support of others.
Sharon Weil
You have survived so muchthat no one remembers.And you still spread warmrain on all your overgrownlots. And you still get dressedin the morning. You stillopen wide for the sun.
Jacqui Germain
There is dignity after the storm.
Catherine Jane Fisher
Even when something is not your fault, toxic blame has no place in your life. Focus on your own empowerment and healing.
Bryant McGill
As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.
Maya Angelou
Gratitude is where self-love begins!
Bryant McGill
You set the standard for how people will treat and regard you, by how you treat and regard yourself.
Bryant McGill
Each and every Indian, man or woman, child or Elder, is a spirit-warrior.
Leonard Peltier
I am shedding.I am not a new me.I am my old me in my new me.I remain, carved with the soul of my knife.My mess scattered all over my countenance. I am me. Take me as I am.
Malebo Sephodi
What you allow inside of you will settle there unless you find an effective way to work it out.
Malebo Sephodi
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.
Maya Angelou
And... Know thyself Know Know
Malebo Sephodi
My scars teach me that I am stronger than what caused them.
Manal Al-Sharif
She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.
Arundhati Roy
You know, there comes a point where you're not giving advice anymore. There comes a point where you're just moralizing, demonstrating your hypothetical superiority when it comes to doing the right thing. That's not very fucking helpful, you know. I'm holding my shit together right now, and rather than telling me that it's not enough, you could try to help me with the stuff I'm capable of.
Cory Doctorow
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
James Baldwin
Don't I always tell you to never listen to me?
Sean Kennedy
To make matters worse, everyone she talks to has a different opinion about the nature of his problem and what she should do about it. Her clergyperson may tell her, “Love heals all difficulties. Give him your heart fully, and he will find the spirit of God.” Her therapist speaks a different language, saying, “He triggers strong reactions in you because he reminds you of your father, and you set things off in him because of his relationship with his mother. You each need to work on not pushing each other’s buttons.” A recovering alcoholic friend tells her, “He’s a rage addict. He controls you because he is terrified of his own fears. You need to get him into a twelve-step program.” Her brother may say to her, “He’s a good guy. I know he loses his temper with you sometimes—he does have a short fuse—but you’re no prize yourself with that mouth of yours. You two need to work it out, for the good of the children.” And then, to crown her increasing confusion, she may hear from her mother, or her child’s schoolteacher, or her best friend: “He’s mean and crazy, and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave him now before he does something even worse.” All of these people are trying to help, and they are all talking about the same abuser. But he looks different from each angle of view.
Lundy Bancroft
Taking advice is fine; by all means, be open-minded, but not to the point of allowing others to obliterate your uniqueness.
Bryant McGill
When someone is attacking you, they are coming to you for advice.
Bryant McGill
You know how I say, ‘Don’t ask anyone how to get somewhere unless they have been there?’ Well, I have been there – I have written, been published, found success, and experienced self-doubt, frustration, anger and disappointment along the way … But you know what? I have not been to the place you’re going to. This is your journey. Your destination. Disregard everything in this book. Or embrace it. Better yet: cherry pick. It’s your life.
Catherine Deveny
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
Maya Angelou
Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.
Rivera Sun
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela
She was sad and lost and alone in the dark," Cecil said. "She needed somebody to hold her.""And you think she's going to get tired of that?""You did," Cecil said. "You shut me right out.""It was your decision, not mine," Dave said. "You are the dearest thing in life to me. You're bright and funny and gentle and decent and full of life. And I will never get tired of you, and neither will Chrissie. It's not up to her anyway. You're the adult. Tell her the truth -- that it was an act of kindness that got out of hand.""I can't hurt her like that," Cecil said. "It will hurt more the longer you let it go on.
Joseph Hansen
Cecil reached for Dave, but Dave stepped back. "Dave, why are you doing this? You're not getting paid. Lovejoy called you off the case. You want the truth? You're compulsive. You can't leave it alone. You're like Adam Streeter, you know that? You live for danger." "I live for justice," Dave said."Justice is a dream," Cecil scoffed, "a romantic ideal. Who the fuck gets justice in this life?(...)
Joseph Hansen
And you never even reported it. You should have reported it. I could have took fingerprints. I'd love to lock up them skinheads.""What I'm reporting is the gun, my Sig Sauer." Dave said. "Hetzel will have it. I want it back.""What did it cost you?" Rose said."That's not the point," Dave said. "It's the only gun I ever owned. I'm against guns. They give too many people power who have no right to it. Guns cancel out intelligence, reason, decency, civility, and put terror in their place. I got along without a gun most of my working life. But a man can't buck the odds forever. About five years back I bought the Sig Sauer. I'm used to it. And I don't know that I'm morally prepared to buy another one.
Joseph Hansen
...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender...
Rebecca Solnit
You are a unique and beautiful expression of the mysterious gift of life and creation.
Bryant McGill
Life is nothing short of a phenomenon. In every sense life is mysterious and unfathomable.
Bryant McGill
Why "revere" the unknowable? Why not find out what it is?
Barbara Ehrenreich
To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.
Rebecca Solnit
Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.
Edward Carpenter