Social Transformation Quotes

The present predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from a historical situation. Their solutions are not so much a matter of personal decision as that of a fundamental social transformation of the structures of our societies starting with a real break with imperialism and its internal ruling allies. Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never develop the continent. ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo

The Stoics taught a life of restraint and control, the personal cultivation of learning, beauty, and reason. The Stoics asked the Romans to realize that much that is encountered in life is beyond the individual's control. Make the best of what can be humanly cultivated. It is a kind of Platonism shrunk to a pursuit of private feelings and thoughts: Do the best with what you can control and refine, and let the rest go.
"The world is rational, but it is only amenable to active intervention within the limits of the individual's capacity. Do not try to be an overachiever. Do not dream of social transformation. Private cultivation rather than social action makes for the good life. Although the slave Epictetus was one of the principal Stoic writers, the emperor Marcus Aurelius's upper-class background is more typical of its devotees.
"Stoicism is a narrow ethic, one suitable to the emotional and intellectual needs of aristocrat and slave alike, but less useful for the ambitious middle class. ~ Norman F. Cantor

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The intellectual project of decolonizing has to set out ways to proceed through a colonizing world. It needs a radical compassion that reaches out, that seeks collaboration, and that is open to possibilities that can only be imagined as other things fall into place. Decolonizing Methodologies is not a method for revolution in a political sense but provokes some revolutionary thinking about the roles that knowledge, knowledge production, knowledge hierarchies and knowledge institutions play in decolonization and social transformation. ~ Zed Books

Ethics is at the center of both spiritual practice and social transformation. Without a strong ethical foundation, we inevitably fall into contradictions-between means and ends, between our actions and our ideals. (p. 9) ~ Donald Rothberg

Turkey is going through an incredible economic, political and social transformation. What is most important is that Turkey has been the owner of this transformation. Ownership has been the key to success. ~ Ali Babacan

The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself. ~ Fredric Jameson

I think it is now time for social scientists to step out of the shadow and to establish an advanced social sciences methodology that integrates science (third-person view) social transformation (second-person view) and the evolution of self (first-person view) into a coherent framework of consciousness-based action research ~ Otto Scharmer

Resistence can start and happen everywhere and whenever you want. ~ Roem Topatimasang

Inevitably, the manufacturers of processed food argue that they have allowed us to become the people we want to be, fast and busy, no longer slaves to the stove. But in their hands, the salt, sugar, and fat they have used to propel this social transformation are not nutrients as much as weapons - weapons they deploy, certainly, to defeat their competitors but also to keep us coming back for more. ~ Michael Moss

Every therapeutic intervention is an act of social transformation. ~ Harville Hendrix

If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will NEVER be built. ~ Van Jones

There are two kinds of prosperity gospels. One promises personal health, wealth, and happiness. Another promises social transformation. In both versions, the results are up to us. We bring God's kingdom to earth, either to ourselves or to society, by following certain spiritual laws or moral and political agendas. Both forget that salvation comes from above, as a gift of God. Both forget that because we are baptized into Christ, the pattern of our lives is suffering leading to glory in that cataclysmic revolution that Christ will bring when he returns. Both miss the point that our lives and the world as they are now are not as good as it gets. We do not have our best life or world now. ~ Michael S. Horton

Defining freedom cannot amount to simply substituting it with inclusion. Countering the criminalization of Black girls requires fundamentally altering the relationship between Black girls and the institutions of power that have worked to reinforce their subjugation. History has taught us that civil rights are but one component of a larger movement for this type of social transformation. Civil rights may be at the core of equal justice movements, and they may elevate an equity agenda that protects our children from racial and gender discrimination, but they do not have the capacity to fully redistribute power and eradicate racial inequity. There is only one practice that can do that. Love. ~ Monique Morris

Most of the states of Europe had no prospect of social transformation, and thus little ability to rival or counter the Nazis and the Soviets. ~ Timothy Snyder

Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand. ~ Klaus Schwab

To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation. ~ Antonin Scalia

One important part of historical recording is to get people of another generation to understand the feelings, the passion that went into social transformation. That's why oral history is so valuable. ~ Alix Kates Shulman

All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed. ~ Bryant McGillns

Corporations, consumers, and citizens must begin acting in concert to create a powerful third pillar of social transformation if we hope to meet the social challenges we currently face with equal force. This begins with corporations that choose to alter how they practice capitalism in two ways to serve the greater good. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Mediation and reconciliation work is about a profound quest for justice and social transformation. But at the same time, they are about service, solidarity, about exploring and rediscovering the human spirit that has been lost or shattered through human conflict, cruelty, ignorance and greed ... ~ Hizkias Assefa

Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County: any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble. ~ Edward Abbey

..:It is important that we excercise the gifts we have been given.
It's important that we develop and live in constant discipline.
Do not wrapp yourselves in this world and its bankrupt values.
Live in constant renewal and transformation of your minds.
Do not allow this world and mediocrity mold you in its own image.
Instead, be transformed from the inside out by always renewing your mind.
By doing so, you will not only master your minds, but you will have a better access to identifying your gifts and talents and make a better use of them…
And with that in mind, you will not only be bless yourself,
But you'll be able to bless many along the way:. ~ Rafael Garcia

If man were infinitely malleable, there would have been nor revolutions; there would have been no change because a culture would have succeeded in making man submit to its patterns without resistance. But man, being only relatively malleable, has always reacted with protest against conditions which made the disequilibrium between the social order and his human needs too drastic or unbearable. The attempt to reduce this disequilibrium and the need to establish a more acceptable and desirable solution is at the very core of the dynamism of the evolution of man in history. Man's protest arose not only because of material suffering; specifically human needs ... are an equally strong motivation for revolution and the dynamics of change. ~ Erich Fromm

Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, having produced fifteen novels, many of which can confidently be called great, as well as having accomplished outstanding work in activities into which his insatiable need to expend his vast energies - to achieve, to prevail - carried him: journalism, editing, acting, social reform. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I think what he loved about me the most was that I wasn't part of that world. But once we were together publicly, he wanted to change me into that social animal. ~ Marla Maples

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Contrary to what we hear, the great American divide is not a clash between conservatives who advocate liberty versus progressives who oppose liberty. Rather, the two sides each affirm a certain type of liberty. One side, for example, cherishes economic liberty while the other champions liberty in the sexual and social domain. Nor is it a clash between patriots and anti-patriots. Both sides love America, but they love a different type of America. One side loves the America of Columbus and the Fourth of July, of innovation and work and the "animal spirit" of capitalism, of the Boy Scouts and parochial schools, of traditional families and flag-saluting veterans. The other side loves the America of tolerance and social entitlements, of income and wealth redistribution, of affirmative action and abortion, of feminism and gay marriage. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

From 1976 to 1983, Washington supported a devastating military dictatorship in Argentina that ran all branches of government, outlawed elections, and encouraged school and business leaders to provide information on subversive people. The administration took control of the police, banned political and union organizations, and tried to eliminate all oppositional elements in the country through harassment, torture, and murder. Journalists, students, and union members faced a particularly large amount of bloody repression, thus ridding the nation of a whole generation of social movement leaders. As was the case in other Latin American countries, the threat of communism and armed guerrilla movements was used as an excuse for Argentina's dictatorial crackdowns. Hundreds of torture camps and prisons were created. Many of the dead were put into mass graves or thrown out of places into the ocean. Five hundred babies of the murdered were given to torturers' families and the assets of the dead totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, were all divided up among the perpetrators of the nightmare. Thirty thousand people were killed in Argentina's repression. ~ Benjamin Dangl

The methods from which the different non-anarchist parties expect, or say they do, the greatest good of one and all can be reduced to two, the authoritarian and the so-called liberal. The former entrusts to a few the management of social life and leads to the exploitation and oppression of the masses by the few. The latter relies on free individual enterprise and proclaims, if not the abolition, at least the reduction of governmental functions to an absolute minimum; but because it respects private property and is entirely based on the principle of each for himself and therefore of competition between men, the liberty it espouses is for the strong and for the property owners to oppress and exploit the weak, those who have nothing; and far from producing harmony, tends to increase even more the gap between rich and poor and it too leads to exploitation and domination, in other words, to authority. This second method, that is liberalism, is in theory a kind of anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without solidarity, without socialism. The criticism liberals direct at government consists only of wanting to deprive it of some of its functions and to call on the capitalists to fight it out among themselves, but it cannot attack the repressive functions which are of its essence: for without the gendarme the property owner could not exist, indeed the government's powers of repression mus ~ Errico Malatesta

Social climbing and power climbing
the two are often synonymous
are what make Washington run ... If there are more than two people together, if there are three, one of them is climbing. ~ Sally Quinn

I learned more about the poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. ~ Harper Lee

The president's claim that Social Security is going broke is misleading at best. The sky is not falling, although there is no doubt that the system needs to be strengthened. ~ Grace Napolitano

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution. ~ Bernard Bailyn

Each phase of the transformation process has distinct milestones, is progressive, and is not revisited. ~ Suzy Ross

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute - this is the only way of human life. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

It's very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Sometimes people are boring not because they are boring but because they want to get rid of the person they are talking to. ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

The ways of this world hold nothing for us anymore. Our conformity is over. Transformation must begin. ~ Chris Tiegreen

The Environment will give many signals, God will give specific signals, The Source will give organized signals, And souls will give social signals. Sanity knows the truth of signals. ~ Ronnie Lee

Turning off all the lights, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I stood in the darkness before the mirror, my hand on the light switch. I forced myself to flick it on.
In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a strange
a fierce, bald, very dark Negro
glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me.
The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence. ~ John Howard Griffin

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. ~ Rivera Sun

I am passionate about any effort to achieve social justice and equality, particularly for women. ~ Christy Turlington

Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

The changes that occur during the prodromal phase have been broadly characterised by Hafner and colleagues (Hafner et al., 1995), though other more intensive studies are reviewed and summarised in Yung et al. (1996). These and other studies (Jones et al., 1993) showed that although diagnostic specificity and ultimately potentially effective treatment comes with the later onset of positive psychotic symptoms, most of the disabling consequences of the underlying disorder emerge and manifest well prior to this phase. In particular, deficits in social functioning occur predominantly during the prodromal phase and prior to treatment. Hafner et al.
(1995) demonstrated clearly that the main factor determining social outcome two years after first admission for schizophrenia is acquired social status during the prodromal phase of the disorder. The importance of this phase was previously poorly appreciated because no conceptual ~ Max J. Birchwood

Nowhere, beloved, can world be but within us. Our life passes in transformation. And the external dwindles away. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don't have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don't. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state. ~ David Graeber

Shame is real pain. The importance of social acceptance and connection is reinforced by our brain chemistry, and the pain that results from social rejection and disconnection is real pain. ~ Brene Brown

Maybe they had become volcano smoke jumpers, diving into an unknown risk to do a dangerous job because, in part, it was a social good and, in part, because they loved the big show. ~ Dick Thompson

We are taught to view pain as an enemy, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom. ~ Ani DiFranco