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
Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life. — Rebecca Solnit
Today's political climate does not allow the luxury of apathy. — Trent Reznor
Politics begins when you stop just making political commentary and start actually influencing the situation. — Alexei Navalny
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
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires active participation from all citizens. — Alexei Navalny
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
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 way to bring about change is to be proactive and active. — Octavia Spencer
Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws. — Robert Peel
It is not enough to profess faith in the democratic process; we must do something about it. — Ella T. Grasso
There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics. — Paul Wellstone
Short Political Activism Quotes
I'm not a politician by profession. I am a citizen who decided I had to be personally involved. — Ronald Reagan
Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics. — Morton Blackwell
To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy. — Thurgood Marshall
When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. — Barack Obama
Political Activism Image Quotes
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. — Voltaire
So plant your own gardens and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
Political Activist Quotes
Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. — Theodore Kaczynski
I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother... Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life. — Leila Khaled
My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax. — Nicola Sturgeon
When words are both true and kind they can change the world.
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
The electronic media introduced this idea to the larger audience very, very quickly. We spent years and years and years meeting with activists all over Europe to lay the groundwork for a political response, as we did here. — Jeremy Rifkin
John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. — Russell Banks
The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around him positively and draws back to himself positive results.
A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us. — John Avlon
I think that compared to other politicians who have been put in jail in the past, compared to the human-rights activists in history who have had to face political prosecution, the activists in Hong Kong nowadays are already quite lucky compared to that. — Joshua Wong
The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time. — Angela Y. Davis
Politics can be very mean and dirty. The things politicians say about each other, and what activists say, I had a brief glimpse of that for a couple of days. If I ever had any questions about whether I wanted to run for office, I now know the answer - I don't. — Matt Hasselbeck
What Is A Political Activism Quotes
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
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
Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity. In what we call art, it's one of the most desirable characteristics of a piece of work. — Leonard Cohen
The activity you're most avoiding contains your biggest opportunity.
I'm not active in politics. I vote as a citizen. And if somebody cares to know what my opinion is at the time of the election, I might or might not share it publicly. — Colin Powell
A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it. — Aristotle
Political Involvement 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
Now is the time to alter our government. Now is the time to stop the movement toward oligarchy. Now is the time to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the 1%... No more excuses. We must all become involved in the political process. — Bernie Sanders
The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others. — Judith Martin
Be gentle with yourself, you're doing the best you can.
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. — John W. Gardner
The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. — Benito Mussolini
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. — Joseph Stiglitz
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. — James Harvey Robinson
There is no difference between religion and politics. Both involve lies and fanatical beliefs that generaly defy logic... Just like rock climbing. — David Schuller
Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them. — Shirley Chisholm
Political Action Quotes
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Military action without politics is like a tree without a root. — Ho Chi Minh
Ideas in a void have never appealed to me; action must follow thought or political life is meaningless. — Oswald Mosley
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
Hollywood is in control of politics and has imported their action-filled movie scripts into the real world. — Kim Dotcom
The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics – novel not just for Russia but for most of the world – a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre. — Stephen Kotkin
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind. — Toni Morrison
Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.
The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers. — Henry Clay
Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman
The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. — Carl Schmitt
Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack. — Soong May-ling
Political Engagement Quotes
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. — Thomas Ehrlich
Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. — Andrew Carnegie
Our ability to effectively engage China and the Arab world rests on shared economic and political interests and mutual understanding. — Rick Larsen
Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged... 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is all wrong. I tell you 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.' — Andrew Carnegie
Any clear-thinking person should be able to engage in nuanced thinking when it comes to complex political positions. — Gad Saad
The stronger you become, the gentler you will be.
Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism. — Alain Badiou
I am ready to have dialogue with the concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement. — Mwai Kibaki
When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere. — Calvin Trillin
A better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter. — Michael Sandel
Political Movements Quotes
I think that if the political and social movement groups and organizations that operate in this country today had the same kind of energetic commitment that the medical marijuana people have, many things could change in this country. — John Trudell
Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region. — Frank Carlucci
Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they're not just about redistributing the goods. They're about figuring out what is good. — Marshall Ganz
Being polite is so rare these days, thats its often confused with flirting.
Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals. — Margaret Mead
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis
The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth. — Petra Kelly
We are now seeing a movement that wishes to place race back at the forefront of our political thinking and, frighteningly, that viewpoint seems to be shared by those on the far left and the far right. We cannot remain cohesive as a nation if we are attacking each other on the basis. — Bret Weinstein
A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage. — Ken Loach
When women turn on women, and take cheap shots at their decisions purely to score political points it serves as proof that feminism, as a movement, is dead and no longer relevant or credible. — S. E. Cupp
Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. — Pat Robertson
Political Life Quotes
The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government. — Edward Abbey
You can change your wife, your politics, your religion, but never, never can you change your favourite football team. — Eric Cantona
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. — Thomas Jefferson
The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide. — Alexander Hamilton
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target — Ashleigh Brilliant
People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.' ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics. — Martha Gellhorn
If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today. — Francis Schaeffer
Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them. — B. R. Babasaheb Ambedkar
Political Participation Quotes
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. — Frederic Bastiat
Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organisation. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee
People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton. — James David Vance
When we get a chance to take part in elections, I am ready to fight for leading positions, including in the presidential vote. — Alexei Navalny
Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part. — Michael Manley
Maybe democrats will eventually turn on Obamacare when they realize you might need a photo I.D. to participate in the program. — Dennis Miller
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? — Barack Obama
As in Machiavelli, the bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being; but the possession of land in nondependent tenure is now the material basis for bearing of arms. — J. G. A. Pocock
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation. — Cesar Chavez
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
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
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
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
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
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
Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was. — James Carriger Paine
State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It's about state dominance of economic activity for political gain. — Ian Bremmer
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers. — Diane Wakoski
One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
You can't afford to hate politics. The politics of this country is democracy. Democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people. The day people stop taking active part in the politics of this country, democracy will not survive. — Sayings
We spent a lot of time talking about politics at home. We went to the camp at Greenham Common. — Liz Truss
To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox
If the authorities constrain banks and are aware of the activities of fringe banks and other financial institutions, they are in a better position to attenuate the disruptive expansionary tendencies of our economy. — Hyman Minsky
Every conceivable cruel method of blackmail was used against me to obtain by force and at all costs confessions and statements both about comrades who had been arrested, and about political activities. — Ernst Thalmann
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. — Thomas Kuhn
There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity. — Mario Vargas Llosa
A market economy is a tool - a valuable and effective tool - for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavour. It's a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market. — Michael Sandel
The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives. — Cherrie Moraga
When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well. — Hilaire Belloc
Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them. Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the security industry? — Gustave de Molinari
I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it. — Hunter S. Thompson
The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities. — Harrison Schmitt
I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. — Thomas Jefferson
The President has apologized for his activities with Monica Lewinsky. These were too little, too late, in my opinion. — Barbara Cubin
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams. — Thomas Jefferson
In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott
What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups-or classes-of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them. — Ludwig von Mises
As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically. — Lee Krasner
Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act. — Paul Hawken
Im happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking were heading in the right direction. The people that govern us dont want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part. — Russell Brand
The kind of violence, looting, destruction that we saw from a handful of individuals in Baltimore, there's no excuse for that. That's not a statement. That's not politics. That's not activism. That's just criminal behavior. — Barack Obama
For those of us who can't be active on the front lines - and this will be most of us - our job is to create a culture that will encourage and promote political resistance. The main tasks will be loyalty and material support. — Lierre Keith
What is true of Mr. Mill's influence on the women's-suffrage question is true also of the other political movements in which he took an active interest. — Millicent Fawcett
Gandhi saw how people have to re-think their own individuality before engaging in political activity. Otherwise they're just playing the game that the adversary has set out. — Pankaj Mishra
If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. — Thomas Sowell
Just as there can be little doubt that labor unions are a significant political force, neither can there be much question that this political force is a by-product of the purely industrial activities that unions regard as their major function. — Mancur Olson
In Conclusion
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