The best thing about my protest has been to see how more and more people have been coming and getting involved.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

Nothing is being done to stop the climate and ecological emergency from happening and to secure the future wellbeing for future generations.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

If everyone does some good, think of what a good world this will be.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

I’m not anti-middle-class in the slightest. Look at me! I am very pro people putting time and money and effort into trying to improve the world.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

I like to give back.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Although I’ve been living in the British Virgin Islands for some time now, I have never stopped caring passionately about the U.K. and its great people.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it’s American or British interests involved.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

I think I’m one of the most patriotic people that I’ve ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way – not by donations; I work at it.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

If people don’t vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it’s not going to change anything if you don’t vote.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‚democratic‘ right to vote.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

The ‚anti-globalisation movement‘ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

Good entrepreneurs are community builders, actively involved with their communities and dedicated to the community’s well being. If you’re dedicated to your community, it will be dedicated to you.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something.