Inspiring Quotations Here is
a compilation of inspirational and provocative quotes, sayings and
proverbs which we've used on our web site and our email newsletters.
Maybe you can use them too! We'll be updating this page now and
again.
A-E F-J
K-L M-N O-S
T-Z
T Let me not pray
to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling
of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
- Rabindranath Tagore
The problem is not how to wipe out all differences,
but how to unite with all differences intact.
- Rabindranath Tagore
If a thousand men and women were not to pay
their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody
measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit
violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition
of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
- Henry David Thoreau
Once a government is committed to the principle
of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go,
and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until
it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a
country where everyone lives in fear.
- Harry S Truman
U
Activism is where you change things
it's not where you don't question ANYTHING
to not disturb your friends
to keep tha peace
to maintain your funding or
to look like a nice person
- Unknown
Don't just go through life; grow through life.
- Unknown
Educate to liberate
- Unknown Let five people meet who are resolved to the
lightning of action rather than the quiet agony of survival –
from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.
- Unknown
Most people pursue pleasure with such breathless
haste they often hurry past it.
- Unknown
Ultimately it is in the streets that power must
be dissolved for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered
and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought.
- Unknown
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
- Unknown
Fear makes us run for
our lives
Hope makes us run for someone else's
-Unknown
V
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity.
We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally
each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
- Voltaire
W
We have learned to ignore the shrill screams
coming from the peddlars of hopelessness. We motor on faith and
enterprise, with small steps. On hope, and without hysteria.
- Binyavanga Wainaina
In the collective vulnerability of presence,
we learn not to be afraid.
- Alice Walker
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle
when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to
bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King
Jr. at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his
lips. Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women's rights convention
in 1851. Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves
she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looked longingly
backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of
all. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of
transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by
a daring comparison, to what is divine. During my years of being
close to people engaged in changing the world, I have seen fear
turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations.
Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side,
have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe
in the love of the world and each other - which is the foundation
of activism.
- Alice Walker reflecting on working for peace
It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our
heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism,
which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism
we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of
an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their
offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we
can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet,
a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual,
and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.
- Alice Walker
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.
- John Webster
True dialogue assumes the recognition of a certain
basic equality among all the parties concerned. In other words,
dialogue assumes respect of "the Other."
- Kwasi Wiredu
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote
so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
- Virginia Woolf
X
Y
Hope is like a path in the country; there was
never a path but when many people walk on it, the path comes into
existence.
~ Lin Yutang
Z
Without deviation from the norm, progress is
not possible.
- Frank Zappa
One semester, when I was teaching, I learned
that there were several classical musicians signed up in my course.
For the last class of the last class of the semester I stood aside
while they sat in chairs up front and played a Mozart quartet. Not
a customary finale to a class in political theory, but I wanted
the class to understand that politics is pointless if it does nothing
to enhance the beauty of our lives. Political discussion can sour
you. We needed some music.
~ Howard Zinn
It is that long-term change that I think we
must see if we are not to lose hope. Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment
will continue. We forget how often in this century we have been
astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary
changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion
against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that
seemed invincible. Political power, however formidable, is more
fragile than we think. Note how nervous are those who hold it.
~ Howard Zinn
TOP |
