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

You can’t just have slogans, you can’t just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it’s going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

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

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.

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

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.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

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.

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.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

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

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

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.

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 submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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.

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

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

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

I’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

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.

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.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

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.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

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

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.

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

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

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

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.

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.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

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

Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.