Activist Quotes

“Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Before you call yourself a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or any other theology, learn to be human first.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.”
― Norman Mailer

“To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don't only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you. This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind's main common language.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you...And you...And you...Gotta give em hope.”
― Harvey Milk, The Harvey Milk Interviews: In His Own Words

“Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“There comes a time in your life when you can no longer put off choosing. You have to choose one path or the other. You can live safe and be protected by people just like you, or you can stand up and be a leader for what is right. Always, remember this: People never remember the crowd; they remember the one person that had the courage to say and do what no one would do.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Real women fight for something, other than their own emotions.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.”
― Marian Wright Edelman

“If you join the rat race — you're in the race of rats.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“Activism begins with you, Democracy begins with you, get out there, get active! Tag, you're it”
― Thom Hartmann

“If your not annoying somebody, you're not alive.”
― Margaret Atwood

“What can we learn from women like Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday that we may not be able to learn from Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell? If we were beginning to appreciate the blasphemies of fictionalized blues women - especially their outrageous politics of sexuality - and the knowledge that might be gleaned from their lives about the possibilities of transforming gender relations within black communities, perhaps we also could benefit from a look at the artistic contributions of the original blues women.”
― Angela Y. Davis

“Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.”
― Yuri Kochiyama

“New concepts should be introduced by the power of imagery.”
― Douglas Coop

“The activist is not the person who says the river is dirty. The activist is the person who cleans up the river”
― Ross Perot

“The 1970s-80s social movement called U.S. third world feminism functioned as a central locus of possibility, an insurgent social movement that shattered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct site where truth can be represented. Indeed, without making this kind of metamove, any 'liberation' or social movement eventually becomes destined to repeat the oppressive authoritarianism from which it is attempting to free itself, and become trapped inside a drive for truth that ends only in producing its own brand of dominations. What U.S. third world feminism thus demanded was a new subjectivity, a political revision that denied any one ideology as the final answer, while instead positing a tactical subjectivity with the capactiy to de- and recenter, given the forms of power to be moved. These dynamics are what were required in the shift from enacting a hegemonic oppositional theory and practice to engaging in the differential form of social movement, as performed by U.S. feminists of color during the post-World War II period of great social transformation. p. 58-59. ”
― Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed

“Proverb goes, change takes time;
I say, time takes change,
for without change there is no time.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Stand odd, stand ablaze.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“I was soon being called a writer-activist, a term I found absurd because it suggested that writing about things that vitally affected people’s lives was not the remit of a writer.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“The greatest activist is the conscientious commoner.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“There is no greater environmental stabilizer than commoners jolted to duty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“I don't live, I combust
(Constitution of Humanity, S.2708)

I'm not a nerd,
I'm the manufacturing plant
of humanitarian nerds,
whose nationality is humanity,
whose worship is reason,
whose madness is world uplift,
whose culture is integration.

I don't think, I roar.
I don't write, I pour.
I don't live, I combust,
so you may outgrow the shore.

I'm not a citizen of the planet,
I'm the Engine of Earth Society.
I'm bound by no constitution,
I'm the Constitution of Humanity.

Cleansed of all newage gullibility,
immunized against organized bigotry,
neither vegetable nor animal,
cometh the call, cometh the tsunami.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Cleansed of all newage gullibility,
immunized against organized bigotry,
neither vegetable nor animal,
cometh the call, cometh the tsunami.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Cometh the call, cometh the tsunami.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Forget rage, we don’t even have to ‘fight back’ against the machine. But we do have to perform one, all-important mind maneuver:

We must reclaim our attention and consciously choose a new way to focus it that is both self-directed and empowering.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Either you build reputation or you build civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace