700 Quotes About Activism

To stand for something, whether in child-rearing or any other sphere, is of course to risk error; it is also to become conspicuous under the gaze of the Other, to give away one's position and to invite rejection. But it is also the only way through which social evolution can take a truly moral direction; it is the inescapable consequence of recognizing and taking seriously the fact that it is we who make the world, not 'it' or 'them'.

If we have any hope of maintaining freedom of thought and freedom of person in the near and distant future, we have to remember what the founding fathers knew: That freedom of thought and freedom of person must be erected together. That truth and justice cannot exist one without the other. That when one is threatened, the other is harmed. That justice, and thus morality, requires the empirical pursuit.

The goal of radicalism is to improve the human condition, not to prove one's own moral superiority.

It's like football. Two sides may each want to beat the other, they may even hate each other as sides, but if someone came and told them football is stupid and not worth playing or caring about, then they'd feel together. It's feeling that matters.

Always have there been great numbers of individuals who were very much eager to fight for good causes. Always there were these, but then there were even greater numbers of trendies who would then become wholly and completely misguided in the efforts.

Yes we are angry, yes we are making a noise about it, and yes, we are hungry for change. We are harpies.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don't yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it's actually going to be possible.

Immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism

But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at one, I would do nothing forever.