social change quotes

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.‘

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.

Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

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

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

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.

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.

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

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.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

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.

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

I believe that if you have revolutionary potential, you must make the world a better place and use it.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

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

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

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.

It’s a facet of the gay rights movement that people don’t think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‚head and master rule,‘ that the husband was head and master of the house.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

I’m trying to make the world a more open place.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

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.

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

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

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

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

There are a number of women who have brought about immense change in society.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

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

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.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.