Activism, in all its forms - youth, political, performative, environmental, judicial, art, or the inspiring 16 days of activism - holds immense power. It's the pulsing heart of change, the driving force behind societal progress. And what better way to tap into this power than through quotes about activism? These nuggets of wisdom serve as a beacon, illuminating the path towards a better world. They inspire, motivate, and challenge us to take action. Do you want to make a difference? Do you aspire to be a catalyst for change? Then let these quotes be your guide!
Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet. — Alice Walker
Activism is something that no one can fake. You get angry. You cry. But you never throw in your towel, because that anger is what is propelling you to further action. — Leymah Gbowee
The way to bring about change is to be proactive and active. — Octavia Spencer
You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle. — Talib Kweli
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river. — H. Ross Perot
Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen. — John F. Kennedy
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world. — Dolores Huerta
Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws. — Robert Peel
Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection. — Rebecca Solnit
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires active participation from all citizens. — Alexei Navalny
Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field. — Charles Francis Richter
Look at mother nature on the run in the 1970's. — Neil Young
So plant your own gardens and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
Pleasure Activism Quotes
Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure. — Robert Baden-Powell
Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. — Julia Child
It seems to me a measure of the true perversity
of the human race, that one of its very few
reliably pleasurable activities should be the
subject of so much hysteria and repression. — Otto Gross
The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around him positively and draws back to himself positive results.
The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived. — Confucius
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise — Alfred North Whitehead
Intellectual activity is perhaps the greatest pleasure of life; chess is one of the forms of intellectual activity. — Siegbert Tarrasch
The activity you're most avoiding contains your biggest opportunity.
But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews. — Laurence Housman
The Lord has different names according to His different activities. For example, His name is Madhusüdana because He killed the demon of the name Madhu; His name is Govinda because He gives pleasure to the cows and to the senses — A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity...When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently. — Gretchen Rubin
Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain. — Aldous Huxley
Youth Activism Quotes
I can see both trends among the youths: people who are ready for a constructive, critical and active presence, and others who are ready to become invisible Muslims and to compromise to be accepted. I put my hope in the former and pray for the latter. — Tariq Ramadan
I've experienced first-hand the wonderful work organizations like J Bar J do for young people in Central Oregon and I am encouraged that the federal government is taking an active role in the Cascade Youth and Family Center. — Greg Walden
My activism did not spring from being black...The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family. — Bayard Rustin
Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
When I was young, I would sit in the bath and ideas would come to me. But I'm not young any more, so now I just sit in the bath. — Aki Kaurismaki
Exercise is remarkably beneficial for the brain. High fitness levels in midlife delayed dementia onset by 9.5 years in women. Larger brain volumes have also been linked to increased physical activity. Maintain youthful brain volume by embracing exercise. We can transform our brain health as we age. — Rhonda Patrick
Superficial parallels were drawn between the Church and the Nazi Party, with its emphasis on active involvement by every member. The women's auxiliary of the Party and the Hitler Youth were regarded by some as secular equivalents to the Church's Relief Society, MIA, and the Scouting programs. — Fawn M. Brodie
Everyday has 1440 minutes. Be active for 30!
Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifeline; it is condemned to bleed to death. — Kofi Annan
After the initial critical learning period of youth is over, the areas of the brain that need to be 'turned on' to allow enhanced, long lasting learning can only be activated when something important, surprising, or novel occurs, or if we make the effort to pay close attention. — Norman Doidge
The more we increase the active participation and partnership with young people, the better we serve them. ... And the more comprehensively we work with them as service partners, the more we increase our public value to the entire community. — Maria del Carmen Martinez-Bordiu y Franco
Festival of the impassioned efforts and manifold ambitions of all forms of youthful activity of every generation springing from the threshold of life. — Pierre de Coubertin
Student Activism Quotes
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. — Barack Obama
All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher. — Mortimer Adler
Teachers who are not actively involved in the learning process themselves, force their students to drink from stagnant water — Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
Don't mistake activity with achievement.
I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist. — Michel Foucault
Grosvenor and Burke suggest that continually, though silently, a school building tells students who they are and how they should think about the world. It can help to manufacture rote obedience or independent activity; it can create high self-confidence or low self-esteem. — Alison Lurie
According to research, test scores improved by 17.3% for students regularly engaged in chess classes, compared with only 4.6% for children participating in other forms of enriched activities. — Susan Polgar
Think that's what attracted me to painting so much. I could create any kind of world that I wanted. Nothing hurts here, no pain, nobody's unhappy, it's a pleasant place. Everything's nice here.
I want my students to love to read. Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time — Rafe Esquith
I have always been interested in politics. I was in the student union before, very active. — Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
The act of learning itself is no longer seen as simply a matter of information transfer, but rather as a process of dynamic participation, in which students cultivate new ways of thinking and doing, through active discovery and discussion, experimentation and reflection. — Susan C. Aldridge
Berkeley had a liberal element in the student body who tended to be quite active. I think that's in general a feature of intellectually active places. — John Searle
Art Activism Quotes
Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind. — Magdalena Abakanowicz
I do believe that one way to bring cultures together, to develop trust between people and countries and religions, is through education. And through music and art and basketball and activities and joys that people share worldwide, regardless of ethnic background or religious orientation. — Steve Kerr
If you want to accomplish anything in life, you can't just sit back and hope it will happen. You've got to make it happen. — Chuck Norris
Visioning is an ongoing journey, not a one-time activity.
Equilibrium is the profoundest tendency of all human activity. — Jean Piaget
As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities. — Gary Bauer
Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice. — Ove Arup
Do Epic Shit!
A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind. — Clive Bell
Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach - how you look at things . . . Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. — Osho
Untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield; so also persons untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace are quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness in active life. — Paramahansa Yogananda
In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is? — Robert Henri
Active Life Quotes
Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me. — Sojourner Truth
Our confidence in Christ does not make us lazy, negligent, or careless, but on the contrary it awakens us, urges us on, and makes us active in living righteous lives and doing good. There is no self-confidence to compare with this. — Huldrych Zwingli
The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach. — Le Corbusier
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. — Jon Kabat-Zinn
If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities... the expression of love... then life itself loses its meaning. — Harvey Milk
Praise is God's sunlight in the heart. It destroys sin germs. It ripens the fruits of the Spirit. It is the oil of gladness that lubricates life's activities. — Smith Wigglesworth
I want to be around people that do things. I don't want to be around people anymore that judge o talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.
If you don't like your situation in life, don't fret or worry--do something about it. Worry less, and act more. — Zig Ziglar
Wherever love and compassion are active in life, we can perceive the magic breath of the spirit blowing through the sense world. — Rudolf Steiner
I like people who are still actively creating in their life, who aren't set, I don't feel like I'm set. And I don't have any baggage, for better or worse. I don't have any plants or pets or kids. I can lock the door and go. I need to be with somebody for whom that's okay. — Dana Delany
Human Activity Quotes
The task of organizing human happiness needs the active cooperation of man and woman: it cannot be relegated to one half of the world. — Lillian Wald
Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being — Plato
It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement. Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs, therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity. — Isocrates
My vision is a future for humanity where we will be completely free to pursue activities outside of our planet. — Franklin Chang Diaz
Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view. — Edward O. Wilson
Life is difficult. Not just for me or other ALS patients. Life is difficult for everyone. Finding ways to make life meaningful and purposeful and rewarding, doing the activities that you love and spending time with the people that you love - I think that's the meaning of this human experience. — Steve Gleason
Studies suggest that humans spend as much as 40 percent of our speech time informing others about our own subjective experiences. It’s believed that doing this fires up neural pathways associated with reward and activates addiction centers in the brain such as the nucleus accumbens. — Rangan Chatterjee
It's in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests. — Van Jones
For our personal advancement in virtue and truth one quality is sufficient, namely, love; to advance humanity there must be two, love and intelligence; to accomplish the Great Work there must be three love, intelligence, and activity. And yet love is ever the root and the source. — Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
Active Minds Quotes
Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind. — Karl Popper
Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. However, with practice and experience the mind is freed from the skull, and the fresh and new can appear as though for the first time. It — Matsuo Basho
Dance is active meditation. When we dance, we go beyond thought, beyond mind and beyond our individuality to become one in the divine ecstasy of the union with the cosmic spirit. This is the essence of the trance dance experience. — Goa Gil
An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body. — George S. Patton
My psycho-analytic work has convinced me that when in the baby's mind the conflicts between love and hate arise, and the fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in development. — Melanie Klein
Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth — Leo Tolstoy
If you can be funny, it means you're intelligent. Your brain is working fast. — Amber Valletta
If the quickness of the mind and the fluency of the tongue are too punctilious and sharp, moderate them in your activity and rest. — Xunzi
True success is exiting some rat race to modulate one’s activities for peace of mind. — Edward O. Thorp
Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business. — Gary Keller
Political Activism Quotes
The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people. — Bernie Sanders
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. — Voltaire
My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax. — Nicola Sturgeon
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. — Robert Nozick
Activists need to educate themselves about the power of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, invented in 2009, and use crypto to leverage the success of their independent media gains to tip the balance of power away from the troika in ways that could never happen by backing a political candidate. — Max Keiser
Social etiquette dictates that when in mixed company, one should avoid discussing politics and religion. As someone who is quite active on various social portals, I can attest to the visceral emotions that are triggered when these topics are broached! — Gad Saad
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology. — H. L. Mencken
One of the chief symptoms of every revolution is the sharp and sudden increase in the number of ordinary people who take an active, independent and forceful interest in politics. — Vladimir Lenin
I’m not a politician. I don’t want to be a politician, because politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right. — Benjamin Carson
Physical Activity Quotes
Breathing is so important with physical activity, then how much more important is it with psychological activity? — Kevin Gates
I am up and about when I am ill, and in the most appalling weather. I am on horseback when other men would be flat out on their beds, complaining. We are made for action, and activity is the sovereign remedy for all physical ills. — Frederick the Great
I really don't think I need buns of steel. I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon. — Ellen DeGeneres
One of the best ways to move naturally is by inconveniencing yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel. — Dan Buettner
People who are making it to live in environments where they are regularly nudged into physical activity. — Dan Buettner
Diet and physical activity levels are believed to be a key factor in successful longevity. — Valter Longo
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical. — Jim Morrison
A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time: pills or stairs. — Joan Walsh Anglund
Men and women aged forty-five to seventy-nine who are physically active, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, do not smoke, and consume alcohol moderately have on average one-fourth the risk of death during a given year than people with unhealthy habits. — Daniel Lieberman
When we exercise, the brain structure changes to accommodate - especially in motor regions and areas that need more oxygen. Increased physical activity is associated with LARGER brain volumes and thicker cortical regions - which is linked to intelligence. — Rhonda Patrick
Get Active Quotes
I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring. Because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. — Sojourner Truth
There's a very specific thing you can do to get in magazines. I'm much happier to just show up and do the job. I haven't taken the active approach to making myself a star. I haven't been in a blockbuster. — Paul Rudd
During these two and a half years that have followed the war, the most urgent problem we have encountered was: to activate the public enterprises, to bring them up to the level that international markets demand and we are just now getting them prepared for privatization. — Ibrahim Rugova
We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. — Joni Mitchell
Every day I get better at knowing that it is not a choice to be an activist; rather, it is the only way to hold on to the better parts of my human self. It is the only way I can live and laugh without guilt. — Staceyann Chin
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed - geared toward improving our entire society. — Laurene Powell Jobs
If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships. — Adam Grant
...the goal of all spiritual life is to get your ego out of the way - outwit the sucker; dissolve it; shoot it; kill it. Silence the incessant planning, organizing, running, manipulating, possessing, and processing"... "because these activities preclude awareness of the Divine. — Lawrence Kushner
The key is to focus on things that are under your control and make a difference. Don’t get distracted by the things you can’t change. — Jim Simons
As I grow older part of my emotional survival plan must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively waiting for it to find me. — Bebe Moore Campbell
Keep Active Quotes
Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep quiet. — Eliphas Levi
Individuals with kidney disease who are able to obtain treatment early experience a higher quality of life and are able to maintain more of their day-to-day activities, including keeping their jobs. — Xavier Becerra
Find first peace within yourself. Don't eat too much. Keep your brain active. Love. — Rita Levi-Montalcini
Never look back, except for an occasional glance, look ahead and plan for the future. Success is not built on past laurels, but rather on a continuous activity. Keep busy searching out new ideas and, experimentally, keep ahead of the times, or at least up with them. — Dorothy Draper
The humanities are the heartbeat of democracy, and we need to fight to keep them alive and well. — Martha C. Nussbaum
I try to keep the topics trendy. If it’s a rant, it’s something I feel strongly about, and people will watch it because they either agree or disagree. — Ryan Higa
The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer. — Elvin Jones
A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to "put it behind you" but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened. — David Richo
Good Viking genes, being vegetarian and having rowdy dogs and kids definitely keep me in shape. Not eating meat gives me the energy I need to keep up with work, family and travel - I'm very active. — Sayings
It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Animal Activist Quotes
Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it. — Dick Gregory
It's not about loving animals. It's about fighting injustice. My whole goal is for humans to have as little contact as possible with animals. — Gary Yourofsky
I don't have a hands - on fondness for animals. I did not grow up bonded to any particular nonhuman animal. I like them and I pet them and I'm kind to them, but there's no special bond between me and other animals... — Wayne Pacelle
I'm an animal rights activist because I believe we won't have a planet if we continue to behave toward other species the way we do. — James Cromwell
Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation. — Ingrid Newkirk
If abandoning animal research means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it ... We have no basic right ... not to be harmed by those natural diseases we are heir to. — Tom Regan
Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughter houses. — Ingrid Newkirk
In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether. — Ingrid Newkirk
Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans. — Peter Singer
Eating meat is primitive, barbaric, and arrogant. — Ingrid Newkirk
...one cannot actively help a woman to give birth. The goal is to avoid disturbing her unnecsessarily. — Michel Odent
Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass.' It's always about critical connections. — Grace Lee Boggs
It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result. — Mahatma Gandhi
My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing. — Paula Scher
Most of us are reflecting life and not affecting it. Your inner speech mirrors your mind, and your mind mirrors God. If you
do not change your thoughts, you haven't changed their activity. And if
you do not change their activity, the conditions of your life cannot
change, for they are only bearing witness to the inner action of your
mind. — Neville Goddard
Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value. — Michael Porter
If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority. — Barbara Jordan
Society does not go down because of the activities of criminals,
But because of the inactivities of the good people. — Swami Vivekananda
We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results. — R. A. Torrey
In Conclusion
Reading quotes about activism is more than just a passing activity; it's a source of inspiration, a spark that ignites the fire within. It gives voice to our deepest desires for justice, equality, and change. These quotes are not just words, they're a rallying cry, a call to action. They remind us that we have the power to shape the world, to make it a better place. Why just watch from the sidelines when you can be a part of the change? Isn't it time you listened to the call? Let these quotes fuel your passion, steer your actions, and inspire you to be the activist you were meant to be!
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Citation
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