advocacy quotes

I am pro-education. I’m just anti the system.

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‚I’m a representative.‘

I was not an activist.

There are thousands of ways to take action. For example, plant trees, pick up litter, join an organisation or movement that makes a difference and especially try to influence adults and put pressure on people in power.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

I just want to lobby for God.

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

Standing in support of children is something we should all be able to get behind, regardless of party affiliation.

I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I love being in a courtroom.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

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

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

I don’t like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like factory farming. I’m not an advocate for the meat industry.

The idea that there is one kind of African is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue, for example, that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

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.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

I was a proponent of the ERA.

The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.

How can we help President Obama?

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

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

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

I’m very lucky. The public happens to like me. Maybe they like me because I use every opportunity to talk about injustice.

We need every person on Earth to acknowledge that climate change is real and encourage each other and our leaders to address the challenge.

My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

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.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.