Quotes by Activists - Page 48

It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.
James Baldwin
Expand!You are not small. Your Foremothers did not do what they did so you could occupy small!
Malebo Sephodi
Crossing the Rubicon of absolute pain is the only journey of purpose and meaning in life.
Bryant McGill
Mostly we tell the story of our lives, or mostly we're taught to tell it, as a quest to avoid suffering, though if your goal is a search for meaning, honor, experience, the same events may be victories or necessary steps. Then the personal matters; it's home; but you can travel in and out of it, rather than being marooned there. The leprosy specialist Paul Brand wrote, "Pain, along with its cousin touch, is distributed universally on the body, providing a sort of boundary of self," but empathy, solidarity, allegiance--the nerves that run out into the world--expand the self beyond its physical bounds.
Rebecca Solnit
If you want meaning in your life you must give your life meaning.
Bryant McGill
That's what "meaning" is—a special additive like salt or garlic that could make even the most fetid piece of meat seem palpable, even delicious.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Talk without the support of action means nothing.
DaShanne Stokes
What does this beauty or than music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.
Helen Keller
Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.
Arundhati Roy
The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.
Rebecca Solnit
I became an actor because it was my clumsy attempt to become myself.
Martin Sheen
Sometimes I get mail for people who lived in my home before I did, and sometimes my own body seems like a home through which successive people have passed like tenants, leaving behind memories, habits, scars, skills, and other souvenirs.
Rebecca Solnit
Peace": the fruit of justice done especially to the Self.
Alice Walker
It’s a journey and the sad thing is you only learn from experience, so as much as someone can tell you things, you have to go out there and make your own mistakes in order to learn.
Emma Watson
What gets scary is when your self-worth is tied up in what strangers think of you.
Emma Watson
The power to define the other seals one's definition of oneself.
James Baldwin
Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.
James Baldwin
Dare to believe that good things are possible when you follow your heart.
Bryant McGill
Most worldly goals for so-called success are soul traps similar to quicksand.
Bryant McGill
A goal that is not written is not a goal. It only becomes real when you write it down.
Bryant McGill
...adopt the "practice makes progress" approach
Mark Hawthorne
To be sure, I had, and have, spent the better part of my post-college life growing up in the public eye, with my shameful warts, big and ugly, looming there for the world to see; and it has been a mighty battle trying to be a man, a Black man, a human being, a responsible and consistent human being, as I have interfaced with my past and with my personal demons, with friends and lovers, with enemies and haters. As Tupac Shakur once famously said to me, “There is no placed called careful.” On the one hand, Tupac was right: There is not much room for error in America if you are a Black male in a society ostensibly bent on profiling your every move, eager to capitalize on your falling into this or that trap, particularly keen to swoop down on your self-inflicted mishaps. But by the same token, Tupac was wrong: There can be a place called careful, once one becomes aware of the world one lives in, its potential, its limitations, and if one is willing to struggle to create a new model, some new and alternative space outside and away from the larger universe, where one can be free enough to comprehend that even if the world seems aligned against you, you do not have to give the world the rope to hang you with.
Kevin Powell
Let the fires of truth burn away your false life and your excuses, fears, blaming, doubts and illusions of insignificance.
Bryant McGill
Some of the most amazing people in the world were not perfect; they were scarred by suffering, hardships, losses and imperfections.
Bryant McGill
Allow your pain to cleanse you and burn away what needs to die.
Bryant McGill
Because of pain you feel more and so you live more.
Bryant McGill
Every moment you are open, as a humble student, you are surrounded with infinite possibilities of choice.
Bryant McGill
You are the observer who watches your emotions as they push, pull and stretch you.
Bryant McGill
Your unstoppable nature is becoming and blooming — you simply, are. Go easy.
Bryant McGill
Life is so big. Do not try to fill it. Instead, expand within. You are enough for you.
Bryant McGill
The art of surrender is the art of getting out of the way of your own growth.
Bryant McGill
Pain is as expansive as life itself. Pain grows with us and in us as a cultivation of life's unfolding.
Bryant McGill
If you want relief from pain just strive to touch more of every part of life.
Bryant McGill
The truth only comes if you are willing to face some really unpleasant things about yourself.
Bryant McGill
Even the softest and sweetest heart was made by design for extreme battle.
Bryant McGill
To heal, you have to give yourself to the pain. You cannot avoid facing yourself your whole life.
Bryant McGill
Your soul has a resiliency and a capacity to endure suffering that is beyond anything you can imagine.
Bryant McGill
Fear is a prison where you are the jailer. Free yourself!
Bryant McGill
Big mistakes are an outstanding opportunity to showcase your ability to recover and have grace under pressure.
Bryant McGill
The bigger the mistake the bigger the opportunity.
Bryant McGill
Most mistakes which seem huge in the heat of the moment are quickly forgotten.
Bryant McGill
Anything you want is just beyond your fear.
Bryant McGill
One of the fastest ways to move through your pain is to get a grip on reality.
Bryant McGill
When you truly face your pain you will only see yourself. Your fear was always you.
Bryant McGill
Real transformation requires real honesty. If you want to move forward — get real with yourself!
Bryant McGill
When you are avoiding your pain you are really only avoiding your growth.
Bryant McGill
The only end to your pain is through fully consuming it and digesting it, otherwise it will consume you.
Bryant McGill
Your pain was always a part of a plan to open your heart to love.
Bryant McGill
Your hard journey has had a great purpose!
Bryant McGill
The tides of change have great purpose in our lives.
Bryant McGill
Growth and empowerment requires reflection and facing the frightening, ugly, hard and unbearable reality.
Bryant McGill
The truth can do years of work in seconds.
Bryant McGill
Once you let the truth loose it is like setting a fire that you can't stop.
Bryant McGill
If you relax your mind, it can begin working for you.
Bryant McGill
Act as though everything will be perfectly fine — because it will. Life has you and it's not letting you go.
Bryant McGill
Accept that you are not finished, and a new and better life is just beginning.
Bryant McGill
When you are broken open you get to discover for the first time what is inside you.
Bryant McGill
You are being guided when you need it most — if you will just listen.
Bryant McGill
Your total intelligence knows exactly what to do, because you were made to weather the storms of life.
Bryant McGill
Your greatest moments of challenge are a call to defy your timid habits of safety and rush out into life.
Bryant McGill