#Social Change Quotes

“The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.”

“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”

“Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the distemper's that make an ordered life impossible.”

“Victor Hugo said you can stop an invasion of armies, but you can never stop an invasion of ideas. There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. It wasn't until 1920, four years after my mother was born - and she's still alive and healthy - that women were given the right to vote. Now it's hard even to imagine that for the greater part of the history of our country fifty percent of the population was not allowed to vote.”

“I'll bet you the time ain't far off when a woman won't know any more than a man.”

“The war for our Union, with all the constitutional issues which it settled, and all the military lessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but one meaning in the eyes of history. It freed the country from the social plague which until then had made political development impossible in the United States. More and more, as the years pass, does the meaning stand forth as the sole meaning.”

“Let us make education brave and preventive. Politics is an afterwork, a poor patching. We are always a little late... We shall one day learn to supercede politics by education... We must begin higher up, namely in Education.”

“History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”

“History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.”

“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!?”

“It's time we stop worrying, and get angry you know? But not angry and pick up a gun, but angry and open our minds.”

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

“We don't need no more rappers, we don't need no more basketball players, no more football players. We need more thinkers. We need more scientists. We need more managers. We need more mathematicians. We need more teachers. We need more people who care; you know what I'm saying? We need more women, mothers, fathers, we need more of that, we don't need any more entertainers”

“You gotta make a change. Its time for us as a people to start making some changes, lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live, and lets change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on us, to do what we gotta do to survive.”

“Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other.”

“Elevation of today's generation, if I can make them listen. Prisons ain't what we need, no longer stuck in greed.”

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

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”

“I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.”

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

“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

“When you educate a girl, you begin to change the face of a nation.”

“Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.”

“I was in a conversation and someone said: "You know, we were talking about the whole issue of transgender and how it has become so accepted now, and somebody said, 'You know the Oprah show, I think has had a big impact.'" I said, I don't think so. We did several transgender [shows], but we didn't do as much for transgender as I did for, say, abused kids or battered women. And they said, "But no, you started the conversation. You started the conversation and the conversation has led us to here."”

“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”

“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.”

“It is the duty of a non-co-operator to preach disaffection towards the existing order of things. Non-co-operators are but giving disciplined expression to a nation's outraged feelings.”

“It's time for us as a country to try to come together in ways that freedom was really meant to be.”

“There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die.”

“First they ignore you, then they denounce you, and then they say that they knew what you were saying all the time.”

“The expectation of my life was that I might be able to work for some good white folks. Now I got some good white folks working for me.”

“Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers.”

“For a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a fair just society”

“It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution.”

“Change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy.”

“Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power.”

“I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed.”

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

“The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”

“We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.”

“History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”

“To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force.”

“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

“I think if we, say, if all of the major leaders in this struggle [for human's rights] were at, at war with each other, then I think it would be very difficult to make this social revolution the kind of powerful revolution that it's proved to be.”

“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

“The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together, they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all.”

“A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”

“I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.”

“Many an individual has turned from the mean, personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there has been such a change in one person, there can be the same change in many.”