Political Activism Quotes

If CASA?s board, which includes such scientific experts as actress Jamie Lee Curtis, wants to tell the world that drinking is bad for you, that?s their prerogative? But there?s no excuse for political activism masquerading as science. ~ Bill Vaughan

As a young man in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gandhi developed satyagraha, a mode of political activism based upon moral persuasion, while mobilizing South Africa's small Indian minority against racial discrimination. ~ Pankaj Mishra

I think there's a little more attention to human needs than to property rights. But I don't think much of political activism. It's so shortsighted. Most people are interested in their own personal comfort. I've said that about environmentalists. I think they care about bike paths and places to park their Volvos, not the planet as an abstraction. ~ George Carlin

That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes. ~ June Jordan

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. ~ Audre Lorde

I'm struggling to keep up with her pace. Though I'm taller, she's built for speed and I'm built for political activism. ~ Jani Berghuis

Hitler spoke at length about the impact of his own personal Catholic faith on his political activism, noting that it was his religious convictions in particular that compelled him to be a ruthless anti-Semite. ~ Derek Hastings

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969. ~ Camille Paglia

To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic. ~ Conor Oberst

When it comes to engaging and influencing culture, too many Christians think too highly of political activism. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self. ~ Tom Robbins

The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in political activism for poor and working people. ~ Cornel West

Especially for the younger generation, the Internet is not some standalone, separate domain where a few of life's functions are carried out. It is not merely our post office and our telephone. Rather, it is the epicenter of our world, the place where virtually everything is done. It is where friends are made, where books and films are chosen, where political activism is organized, where the most private data is created and stored. It is where we develop and express our very personality and sense of self. ~ Anonymous

They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I've embraced rock 'n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock 'n' roll. But I am also engaged in all of these things separately. ~ Patti Smith

A lot of people think of political activism as some grim duty, and I think we do have an obligation to be citizens - to be informed and engaged. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Whenever anybody gets involved in politics, its always exciting for me because we take for granted our freedoms and our abilities to effect change through political activism. ~ Emily Saliers

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from man's Creator.
In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously self-evident "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." It is the governing character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure foundation upon which man's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" rests. Called "virtue" by America's Founding Fathers, the impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3:17). ~ David A. Norris

Take your hurt feelings and channel them into political activism. ~ Joy Browne

What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work. ~ Ian Svenonius

Stonewall" has come to mark the origins of gay political activism although earlier groups in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the French movement that grew out of the May 1968 events cannot be ignored. ~ Chantal Zabus

The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working just a little bit harder: a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vote, the next committee meeting. These noble efforts aren't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they are tending the seaweed on its watery grave.
The times call for a new generation of book hunters. Like the book hunters of the Middle Ages, the new book hunters take it as their mission to uncover and salvage the best of what came before: to cherish it; hold it up for praise and emulation; study it; above all, to love it and pass it on. ~ Paul D. Miller

Outlawing religion form the political arena is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the First Amendment. We do a grave disservice to our country by removing the influence of religion. If you separate God from the public arena, inevitably you separate good from our government. ~ Bill Bright

There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule, executions without trial or with a mock trial for political offenses, the nationalization or expropriation of private property, and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw. ~ Ayn Rand

The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs. ~ George F. Kennan

Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in One World Peter Singer explains its moral meaning. His position is carefully developed, his tone is moderate, but his conclusions are radical and profound. No political theorist or moral philosopher, no public official or political activist, can afford to ignore his arguments. ~ Michael Walzer

You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout! ~ Henry Adams

A common error of western commentators who seek to interpret Islamism sympathetically is to view it as a form of localised resistance to globalisation. In fact, Islamism is also a universalist political project. Along with Neoliberals and Marxists, Islamists are participants in a dispute about how the world as whole is to be governed. None is ready to entertain the possibility that it should always contain a diversity of regimes. On this point, they differ from non-western traditions of thinking in India, China and Japan, which are much more restrained in making universal claims.

In their unshakeable faith that one way of living is best for all humankind, the chief protagonists in the dispute about political Islam belong to a way of thinking that is quintessentially western. As in Cold War times, we are led to believe we are locked in a clash of civilisations: the West against the rest. In truth, the ideologues of political Islam are western voices, no less than Marx or Hayek. The struggle with radical Islam is yet another western family quarrel. ~ John N. Gray

Political correctness is anti-empathetic because it has correctness in it. We all have biases, we all have prejudices and if we cant talk about them openly - if we get attacked for it then this is an anti-empathetic movement and therefore it cannot complain about a lack of empathy. ~ Stefan Molyneux

In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal or even superior, to that of the other sex. ~ Catharine Beecher

I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Religion may indeed inspire acts of great kindness and courage. But it also trains people to believe things for which there is no evidence. This makes religion's intrusion into the political sphere all the more troubling. ~ Ron Reagan

Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach, of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders, particularly the president. ~ Ron Fournier

The system of patriarchy can function only with the cooperation of women. This cooperation is secured by a variety of means: gender indoctrination; educational deprivation; the denial of women of knowledge of their history; the dividing of women, on from another, by defining "respectability" and "deviance" according to women's sexual activities; by restraints and outright coercion; by discrimination in access to economic resources and political power; and by awarding class privileges to conforming women. ~ Gerda Lerner

Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn't buy this house. First and foremost I'm a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Is humanity ready to look upon the roots of religion as it has looked into its political and scientific roots? Are people ready to strip away the fallacies like they have with humours for bacteria, virus, et cetera?
Can spirituality be given a chance to lie bare and naked, proudly strutting its stuff publicly? These are the questions that will render the verdict of whether one hears the call of the child (truth) and proclaim its message to the religious royalty, or whether humanity will cling to its "infallible" yet invisible messengers as if they currently cling to us as clothing. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

I'm not registered to any party. I don't really play in the political world. I'm really more interested in getting things done. ~ Gary Sinise

The next General Election isn't about electing yet another Labour or Tory MP to join the hundreds of other Labour or Tory MPs in London. It will be about electing a candidate who will put solving people's problems before scoring political points. Someone who will fight for the future of our communities here in Clwyd West. ~ Llyr Huws Gruffydd

Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals. ~ Aberjhani

The political world was anathema; its activists, both retro and progressive, seemed wrongheaded and dreamy. The revolutionaries, armed or peaceful, had no notion of what should happen after they "won." Who would rule? The "people"? Please. What did that mean? The best outcome would be to introduce a new idea into the population that perhaps a politician would act on. The rest was theater seeking an audience. Wealth alone explained humanity's evil, and he was determined to live without deference to it. ~ Toni Morrison

For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the South. ~ Jefferson Davis

Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy ... .The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities ... To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'm very political without being political. I don't know how to speak proper political language. ~ Taki Theodoracopulos

The country has sorted itself ideologically into the two political parties, and those partisan attachments have hardened in recent years. It will take an extraordinary event and act of leadership to break this partisan divide. I thought 9/11 might provide such an opportunity, but it was not seized. ~ Thomas E. Mann

Corporations are poisoning our air and water while at the same time lining the pockets of elected officials with political contributions. ~ Gloria Reuben

We simply cannot afford any further delay in providing the IMF with the resources it requires to help contain the threat of further financial and political instability around the world. ~ Robert Rubin

In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god
Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. ~ Emma Goldman

The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day. ~ Michael Deaver

The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force. ~ Wafa Sultan

Malcolm was the first political pragmatist I knew, the first honest man I'd ever heard. He was unconcerned with making the people who believed they were white comfortable in their belief. If he was angry, he said so. If he hated, he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds. He would not turn the other cheek for you. He would not be a better man for you. He would not be your morality. Malcolm spoke like a man who was free, like a black man above the laws that proscribed our imagination. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril. ~ James P. Hoffa

I believe that I'm entitled to regard my pre-political life as off-limits in terms of what can be looked at and judged. ~ George Osborne

The British monarchy has the political and constitutional task of subtracting from the government and governors of Britain the papal and kingly airs that in America, because we have no such institution, unfortunately adhere to the president. ~ Mark Helprin

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes. ~ Steve Earle

What does a tax do? It takes either from the producer or the consumer a more or less sizable portion of the product destined in part to consumption and in part to savings, in order to apply it to less productive or even destructive ends, and more rarely to savings. ~ Gustave De Molinari

There are only two possible forms of control: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control. They are of such a nature that when the religious barometer rises, the barometer of [external, i.e., political control] falls and likewise, when the religious barometer falls, the political barometer, that is political control and tyranny, rises. That is the law of humanity, a law of history. If civilized man falls into disbelief and immorality, the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense. ~ Juan Donoso Cortes

Shrewdly crafted political agendas, innately complex philosophies, man-made religions, governments and regimes of every sort, and all the endless volumes of man-manufactured wisdom and penned prose all completely failed to redeem mankind and make us better. When the best of our efforts failed to redeem the worst of our behaviors, God declared enough as enough and a baby was born. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I don't care much about the outcome. I'd like for people to feel better and have better lives, but I don't think that's in the cards through political action. I think bloodshed is still the way you get dramatic change. That'll never happen because they've got all the guns now. At least they've got the nice guns, the big ones, the ones with night vision. ~ George Carlin

The people believed that while the courts would be independent, they would defer to the political branches on policy issues. ~ Sam Brownback

We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The apostle Paul had much to say about the immorality of individual church members, but little to say about the immorality of pagan Rome. He did not rail against the abuses in Rome - slavery, idolatry, gladiator games, political oppression, greed - even though such abuses surely offended Christians of that day every bit as much as our deteriorating society offends Christians today. ~ Philip Yancey

We now know that a neo-conservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out. ~ Bill Moyers

The repeal of laws as a means to roll back the state is not unjustified. For example, there is no coercion against those who would pick our pockets for "free" healthcare or education, rather it is more so an act of self-defense. As such, we are free to use the state's political apparatus to further a platform against aggression, democracy, and egalitarianism, while supporting property rights. ~ Daniel Alexander Brackins

My eyes are wide open
I will not squash the pain I feel
I will not succumb to my disbelief
I will not hide from my depression
I will not disavow my anger
I will not turn away
I will expand the love I feel within
And if I don't yet feel the love within
I will expand my sense of connection
I will be a bridge to hope
I will let humanity sing
-I am a Magnificent Woman ~ Melanie Lutz

I guess it's the curse of our generation, having to put aside our lives to do the right thing. ~ Allan Dare Pearce