#Collective Action Quotes

“If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”

“I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.”

“That nonviolence which only an individual can use is not of much use in terms of society.”

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

“We must nurture tolerance, collective wisdom, and democracy.”

“No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.”

“I don't think there is much history can say about me. I just want to be remembered as part of that collective.”

“In order to build our nation, we must all exceed our own expectations.”

“The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.”

“Half-a-dozen or twenty cities of India alone working together cannot bring Swaraj.”

“A small group of determined and like-minded people can change the course of history.”

“I think there can be a collective leadership. Maybe some symbolize the struggle [for human's rights] a little more than others, but I think it's absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in order to make the revolution effective.”

“There is no sound more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people.”

“Freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism though they may be of the true type, never by heroism so called.”

“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to everyone of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me.”

“Whereas the only real solution to the race problem in this country is a solution that involves individual self improvement and collective self improvement in, whereas our own, wherein our own people are concerned.”

“The problem facing our people here in America is bigger than all other personal or organizational differences. Therefore, as leaders, we must stop worrying about the threat that we seem to think we pose to each other's personal prestige, and concentrate our united efforts toward solving the unending hurt that is being done daily to our people here in America.”

“It's only when they join together in a forward movement that this country moves ahead.”

“For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.”

“In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.”

“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

“No one makes a revolution by himself.”

“No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.”

“Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.”

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help... Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business - you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

“There is no individual salvation without collective salvation”

“We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions”

“Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.”

“There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do. Only a union could harness the courage of our pioneers to settle the American west, which is why President Abraham Lincoln passed a Homestead Act giving a tract of land to anyone seeking a stake in our growing economy.”

“What a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, what a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said, about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.”

“For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”