#Activism Quotes

“Nobody wants his cause near as bad as he wants to talk about his cause.”

“My call is the call of battle- I nourish active rebellion;/ He going with me must go well armed.”

“Not being heard is no reason for silence.”

“I write with one hand, but I fight with both.”

“I'm not saying I'm going to rule the world, I'm going to change the world. But I guarantee I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that's our job. It's to spark somebody else watching us. We might not be the one, but let's not be selfish. And because we['re] not going to change the world, not talk about how we should change it. I don't know how to change it. But I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody's going to clean it up!”

“You reached your level, you don't want any more. We asked ten years ago, we were askin' with the Panthers, we were askin' in the Civil Rights Movement. Now those who were askin' are all dead or in jail, wo what are we gonna do? And we shouldn't be angry!?”

“I'm calling for dialogue. I'm gathering attention for dialogue which is what you do in a struggle for power.”

“I don't know how to change the world but I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody gon clean it up.”

“They claim that I'm violent just cuz I refuse to be silent.”

“In a position to make a difference, politicians and hypocrites they don't wanna listen.”

“We talk a lot about Malcom X and Martin Luther King JR, but it's time to be like them, as strong as them. They were mortal men like us and everyone of us can be like them. I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who I am, this is what I do. I say what's on my mind.”

“Tupac the son of the Black Panther, and Tupac the rider. Those are the two people inside of me. I was raised off those ideals.”

“With all this extra stressinThe question I wonder is after death, after my last breathWhen will I finaly get to rest? Through this supressionthey punish the people that's askin questionsAnd those that possess, steal from the ones without possesionsThe message I stress: to make it stop study your lessonsDon't settle for less - even the genius asks-es questionsBe grateful for blessingsDon't ever change, keep your essenceThe power is in the people and politics we address.”

“When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.”

“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”

“Out of anger comes controversy, out of controversy comes conversation, out of conversation comes action.”

“All good niggers, all the niggers who change the world, die in violence. They don't die in regular ways.”

“My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther.”

“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”

“When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people.”

“I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.”

“Go out and make your own speeches. People need you. Go on TV. It can be done. After you speak up a few times, people say, "Hey, we got a crazy man in the community," and they'll begin talking to you.”

“Non-co-operation is the quickest method of creating public opinion.”

“People say that I'm a tree hugger, but I do a lot more than hug trees. I like having my drinking water without faecal matter, that's really nice. Or acceptable levels of strychnine. I'm an air breather, I've gotten used to that over the years.”

“This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out.”

“We have two parties who are basically hijacking our country for their corporate paymasters. And if we focus on 535 members of Congress, that's not all that many, we're going to see a fast turnaround. So focus all your concerns, all the information, the kind of agenda the Green Party has. Turn it right on your Senators and Representatives.”

“I always say there's no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling.”

“Families are incubators for citizen activists.”

“Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism or homophobia or policy issues or taxes or urban decay or health care, you're not going to go anywhere with it if we don't focus on the concentration of power.”

“As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.”

“If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve.”

“Apparently, I've acted like a terrorist. But I'm not a terrorist.”

“Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”

“Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.”

“Your readiness to suffer will light the torch of freedom which will never be put out.”

“The revolutionary artist does not only focus on the negative aspects of capitalist lives, but also creates visions of a revolutionary future.”

“...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.”

“I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.”

“I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school.”

“A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.”

“Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy.”

“The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West.”

“In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.”

“I told my cellmates about the oppression of the whites and apartheid. I helped organize hunger strikes and the like in my prison.”

“The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.”

“I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience... If I had my time over I would do the same again. So would any man who dares call himself a man.”

“Jinnah is a constant source of inspiration for all those who are fighting against racial and group discrimination.”

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

“Perhaps...the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”