Quotes by Activists - Page 86

I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts mad in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.
Derrick Jensen
Violence begins with the fork.
Mahatma Gandhi
I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
Going green doesn’t start with doing green acts — it starts with a shift in consciousness. This shift allows you to recognize that with every choice you make, you are voting either for or against the kind of world you wish to see. When you assume this as a way of being, your choices become easier. Using a reusable water bottle, recycling and making conscious daily consumer choices are just a few…
Ian Somerhalder
I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts.
Russell Brand
Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
Rebecca Solnit
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.
Alice Walker
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
James Baldwin
Of all the consumer products, chewing gum is perhaps the most ridiculous: it literally has no nourishment – you just chew it to give yourself something to do with your stupid idiot Western mouth.Half the world is starving, and the other’s going, ‘I don’t actually need any nutrition, but it would be good to masticate, just to keep my mind off things.
Russell Brand
The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words ofsome loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
Helen Keller
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Cory Doctorow
Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.You saying God vain? I ast.Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.What it do when it pissed off? I ast.Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Alice Walker
If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.
Harvey Milk
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.
Maya Angelou
Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.
Nelson Mandela
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
Maya Angelou
True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.
Mahatma Gandhi
Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking.
Anita Roddick
Rich People plan for three generationsPoor people plan for Saturday night
Gloria Steinem
Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.
Mahatma Gandhi
That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.
Maya Angelou
If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.
Mahatma Gandhi
I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE AND THE CAPTAIN OF MY DESTINY.
Nelson Mandela
Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation
Nelson Mandela
True beauty lies in purity of the heart.
Mahatma Gandhi
Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don't think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth to their children.
Malala Yousafzai
Let us pick up our books and our pens,” I said. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
Malala Yousafzai
It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.
Maya Angelou
And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.
Shane Claiborne
There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results.
Mahatma Gandhi
Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
Maya Angelou
For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.
Helen Keller
I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower - the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
Helen Keller
Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.
Maya Angelou
You lose nothing when fighting for a cause ... In my mind the losers are those who don't have a cause they care about.
Muhammad Ali
A winner is a dreamer who never gives up
Nelson Mandela
A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones
Nelson Mandela
Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
Mahatma Gandhi
Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons.
Malala Yousafzai
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
James Baldwin
Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
Helen Keller
Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.
Maya Angelou
I am the captain of my soul.
Nelson Mandela
Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.
Maya Angelou
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Maya Angelou
I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.
Mahatma Gandhi
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world
Helen Keller
Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?
Betty Friedan
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.
Maya Angelou
There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
Nelson Mandela
I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.
Maya Angelou
I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'.
Muhammad Ali
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it.
Muhammad Ali
Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya Angelou
I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.
Mahatma Gandhi
All great achievements require time.
Maya Angelou
Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.
Gloria Steinem