Lauren > Lauren's Quotes

“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
― Howard Zinn

“Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.”
― Linda Hogan

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
― Angela Y. Davis

“The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself:
Are my trousers long enough?
Is my veil in place?
Can my make-up be seen?
Are they going to whip me?

No longer asks herself:
Where is my freedom of thought?
Where is my freedom of speech?
My life, is it liveable?
What's going on in the political prisons?”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“All reaction is limited by, and dependant on, what it is reacting against.”
― Gloria Anzaldúa

“There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“In trying to become 'objective,' Western culture made 'objects' of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing 'touch' with them.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

“As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”
― Bell Hooks

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“But what she also came to know was that someone somewhere would always see in any kind of difference, an excuse to be mean.”
― Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy

“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.”
― Audre Lorde

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“The sidesaddle was designed to protect a maiden's virginity, while risking the maiden's neck. Rather much for rather little, I thought.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, Beauty

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”
― Bayard Rustin

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours.”
― Vine Deloria Jr.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation.”
― Cherríe L. Moraga

“The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.”
― Gloria Anzaldua