Activism Quotes

If I look at the mass I will never act.

Mother Teresa

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

Malcolm X

Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.

Nellie L. McClung

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.

Malcolm X

Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.

Rivera Sun

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

Ovid

If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.

Albert Einstein

arise,awake,stop not until your goal is achieved.

Swami Vivekananda

The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.

Rivera Sun

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.

Mahatma Gandhi

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.

Christopher Hitchens

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test.

Christopher Hitchens

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

Martin Luther King Jr.

You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.

Mahatma Gandhi

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 the law

Martin Luther King Jr.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Martin Luther King Jr.

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Aristotle