Activism Quotes

"In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility" "If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you" "A right delayed is a right denied." "Ask the SCLC about John Lewis and I'll tell you the story of how someone who not only served as the conscience of our country but literally shed his blood in the struggle for the soul of America" "I believe the soul of this nation is defined by the people who choose to stand, to stand up to the abuse of power, to stand up for the least among us, to stand up for those who would break the country to get rich or get elected" "There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard." "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out." "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" "In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." "The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption" "To speak a true word is to transform the world" "The function of freedom is to free someone else" "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will" "I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed—geared toward improving our entire society" "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent" "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep" "It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world" "Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below." "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral"