Rivera Sun Quotes

All that is needed is to listen. The love song of the world enters our souls through the language of life. Our touchstone of strength forms the shape of our beloveds. Courage surges into our limbs. We rise. One foot steps in the direction of change. This is the Love that thrusts the world through eternity and carries us forward into the infinity of tomorrow. It sings overhead, scouring the barriers of reality, looking for an opening.

Democracy wasn't a set of dry documents nicely laid out on office stationary - it brimmed in the lips of thousands of souls and debated in dozens of accents as it crossed the street from one neighborhood to the next. It was the smell of stale coffee and bodies packed into an old community center. It was the typos in the fliers. It was exasperation, realization, illumination - a knockdown, drag out, sweaty, tearful, impassioned process of people making decisions together.

Every human had the seed of rebellion hardwired into their heart. Squeeze the shell of conformity hard enough and it cracks, allowing the spirit of resistance to burst forth.

Resistance is singing your grandmother's songs so the next generation will know them.

The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.

We should be able to stand up for our ideals and not get struck down. We should be able to protest in our streets without the need for armed protection. A world of life, liberty, and love should be allowed to blossom in our towns and cities.

nonviolent action succeeds twice as often as violent means, in a third of the amount of time, and with a fraction of the casualties.

The woman looked out at the madness of the world and dared to hope. Her eyes were burning coals of stars.

People don't move into action because of statistics. They move because of their hearts. We're hardwired with empathy neurons, billions of them, and human beings are evolutionarily programmed to help one another.

Love demanded this of everyone. To care, not just about one person, but about the whole world. To work for justice, not just for those we know, but for everyone we don't. To keep not just our loved ones safe, but also keep the beloveds of strangers safe. To treat others with as much dignity and respect as we ourselves wish to be treated.

It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures.

Resistance is more than a battle; it is the indomitable presence of life against forces of destruction.

A freedom given up is not so easily regained.

Whoever educates the children controls the future. If we want a democratic future, we must plant the seeds in our little dandelions nationwide and ensure that our education is governed of, by, and for the people.

Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act.
From Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars

The strength of a movement also relied on participation. Nonviolent campaigns succeeded or failed by the numbers of people willing to get in the way of injustice, or withdraw support from tyrants, or put their hands on the freedom plow and sow the seeds of change.

We are the true roots of resistance, they declared, and the scraggly leaves, golden flowers, and windborne seeds.

For the love of one person, we can find the strength to love the whole world.

What is a movement, after all, but the embodiment of aspirations turned into organized action by thousands and millions of people?

Geography and mileage mean nothing. Separate is a single word that covers all distances that aren't together.

Roots, he wrote, symbolize more than underground strong-arms. Roots are also origins, the tendrils of a sprouting seed that give rise to life.

Life wants to live, but more than that, it wants to love.

Without Love, humanity dies of thirst, grasps at riches, destroys the earth through insatiable greed. Without Love, we are walking dust, dead matter stumbling from the dawn of birth to the dusk of death. Without Love, our Earth is stripped of beingness, left barren and lifeless, a pile of rocks and resources, objects to possess and control. Without Love, humanity sleepwalks as automatons, controlled, manipulated, and shoved through a nightmarish existence.

We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.

We shoulder the unbearable, accomplish the impossible, and endure the unthinkable by the intensity of our love.