126 Social Movements Quotes

Following is our list of social movements quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about political movements.

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Famous Social Movements Quotes

Storytelling may be what most distinguishes social movements from interest groups. — Marshall Ganz

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion. — Steve Biko

We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society. — Betty Friedan

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people. - Patricia Hill Collins

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people. — Patricia Hill Collins

Women movements would form among the factory workers, a great mobilisation that destroyed the old models. — Emma Bonino

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

Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large. — Robert Reich

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving. — Gloria Steinem

We have to realize we are building a movement. — Dorothy Height

Social networking is playing a huge role in creating awareness and mobilizing support for all kinds of common interests. What better way to use this remarkable tool than to change the world? — Natalie Portman

Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak. — Karl Marx

Movement is the universal language of personal freedom. — Louis Chevrolet

Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary. — Josip Broz Tito

One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism — Peter L. Berger

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action. — Malcolm X

Short Social Movements Quotes

  • All change starts with a distant rumble at the grassroots level. — Tom Coburn
  • Small groups of people can have a really huge impact. — Larry Page
  • Change happens through movement and movement heals. — Joseph Pilates
  • Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. — Howard Zinn
  • Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws. — Robert Peel
  • The power of social media is it forces necessary change. — Erik Qualman

Social Movements Image Quotes

Social movements quote All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

Movements Quotes

A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion. — Joseph Pilates

Black Lives Matter is the ultimate divisive movement. - Milo Yiannopoulos

Black Lives Matter is the ultimate divisive movement. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Hip is to know, it's a form of intelligence. To be hip is to be update and relevant. Hop is a form of movement, you can't just observe a hop, you gotta hop up and do it. Hip and hop is more than music Hip is the Knowledge, hop is the Movement. Hip and Hop is Intelligent movement — KRS-One

Social movements quote Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.
Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

Fascism was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly. — Oswald Mosley

I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat. — Claudette Colvin

Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban

Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders. — Diane Nash

There is a source of power in each of us that we don't realize until we take responsibility. — Diane Nash

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. — Alfred Adler

Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism. — Hermann Goring

Political Movements Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Protest Movements Quotes

The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. — Wendell Phillips

Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement -- which was only necessary because of them. — Ann Coulter

Protestant churches everywhere are gravitating toward union with the Roman Catholic Church. These religious movements are speeding the fulfillment of the prophecies of the resurrected Roman Empire. For 30 years I have been proclaiming this tremendous event over the air and in print. — Herbert W. Armstrong

'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s. — Jonathan Raban

Today women in many countries are taking part in various types of movements of protest, some of which are serious struggles for economic and social emancipation . — Kumari Jayawardena

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk. — Sarah Waters

The use of the internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements developed...This is a different world. — Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up. — Jose Saramago

Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the "demands" of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world. — Douglas Rushkoff

I think that the most effective social protest that any artist can do would be things that come naturally and feel obvious. I think the Resist movement will continue among people who believe in science, who believe in rights for women, who believe in civil rights. — John Flansburgh

Social Change Quotes

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. — Saul Alinsky

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. — Richard Buckminster Fuller

Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality. — Dalai Lama

Urbanization is not about simply increasing the number of urban residents or expanding the area of cities. More importantly, it's about a complete change from rural to urban style in terms of industry structure, employment, living environment and social security. — Li Keqiang

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. Cesar Chavez Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Nov. 9, 1984 — Cesar Chavez

We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone. — Ronald Reagan

Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair. — Bell Hooks

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. — Harry S. Truman

The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order. — Gustavo Gutiérrez

Achieving control over change, in respect to lifestyle, demands an engagement with the outer social world rather than a retreat from it. — Anthony Giddens

Social Revolution Quotes

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt. — Thomas Sankara

The real struggle isn’t proletariat vs bourgeois. It’s between high-status elites and wealthy elites. When their cooperation breaks, revolution. — Naval Ravikant

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women — Thomas Sankara

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. — Alexis de Tocqueville

Anarchists prepare for social revolution and use every means - speech, writing, or deed, whichever is more to the point; to accelerate revolutionary development. — Johann Most

We are redefining and we are restating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution ... The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or outdated methods on either side of industry. — Harold Wilson

Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself. — Mark Carney

In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations. — Nikola Tesla

It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution. — Le Corbusier

Persuading people through technology is the next social revolution. Facebook demonstrates just how powerful it will be. — B. J. Fogg

Social Action Quotes

No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. — Joseph Brant

If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises

Our brains don’t just process and understand the actions and words of others but their feelings and intentions too, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions. — Chris Voss

Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism. — Philip Zimbardo

Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action. — Malcolm Fraser

The gospel is not about... pie-in-the-sky when they die. ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world.... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action. — Tony Campolo

No one is moved to act, or resolves to speak a single word, who does not hope by means of this action or word to release anxiety from his spirit. — Ibn Hazm

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement. — Patricia Hill Collins

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think, you know, architecture should not just be something that follows up on events but be a leader of events ... by implementing an architectural action, you actually are making a transformation in the social fabric and in the political fabric. Architecture becomes an instigator. — Lebbeus Woods

People Writing About Social Movements

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Marshall Ganz

Marshall Ganz

10 240
Read quotes by Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan
quotes on feminism, state

110 1016
Read quotes by Patricia Hill Collins

Patricia Hill Collins
quotes on education, leadership and social justice

16 497
Read quotes by Emma Bonino

Emma Bonino
quotes on education, love and life

27 212
Read quotes by Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead
quotes on education, civilization and death

289 2575
Read quotes by Robert Reich

Robert Reich
quotes on capitalism, education and government

144 747

More Social Movements Quotes

Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism. — Hermann Goering

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor. — A. Philip Randolph

The movement of Pakistan which the Quaid-e-Azam launched was ethical in inspiration and ideological in content. The story of this movement is a story of the ideals of equality, fraternity and social and economic justice struggling against the forces of domination, exploitation, intolerance and tyranny. — Fatima Jinnah

If there's one thing that people fail to appreciate about the social justice movement where it interfaces with the academy is that just because what is being said is crazy to the point of absurdity does not mean that the strategic plan is absurd. — Bret Weinstein

One of the problems we're facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. — Maajid Nawaz

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label. — Barack Obama

The only social justice movements worth fighting for are the struggles for justice where you lose, you lose, you lose- until you win. — I. F. Stone

Women's rights in essence is really a movement for freedom, a movement for equality, for the dignity of all women, for those who work outside the home and those who dedicate themselves with more altruism than any profession I know to being wives and mothers, cooks and chauffeurs, and child psychologists and loving human beings. — William Ruckelshaus

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist. — Jonah Goldberg

...in place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible. People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race. — Michael Lerner

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. — Samuel Gompers

Unjust social orders do not fall merely by appeals to the consciences of the oppressor, though such appeals may be an important element; history teaches us that they fall because a large enough number of people organize a movement powerful enough to push them down. Rarely do such revolutions emerge in a neat and morally pristine process. — Timothy B. Tyson

Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor - it's not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers - it's against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves. — Kavita Ramdas

The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands. — Rosa Luxemburg

So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social justice' is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity. — Thomas Sowell

The impulse of humanity toward social progress is like the movement in the currents of a great water system, from myriad sources and under myriad circumstances and conditions, beating onward, ever onward toward its eternity, the Ocean. — Anna Julia Cooper

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged. — Jessica Valenti

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. — Betty Friedan

Stock prices are likely to be among the prices that are relatively vulnerable to purely social movements because there is no accepted theory by which to understand the worth of stocks....investors have no model or at best a very incomplete model of behavior of prices, dividend, or earnings, of speculative assets. — Robert J. Shiller

The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Ecopopulism. To change our laws and culture, the green movement justice, political solutions and social change. — Van Jones

The social issues outside of football are not as defined as they were earlier, when integration took place and certain rights were legislated. The Civil Rights movement is over. Individuals can buy homes wherever they want, travel first class wherever they want, eat wherever they want. — Jim Brown

The repeated claim before the 'seizure of power' - that the NSDAP, as a national social-revolutionary movement, and not simply another political party... would create new bonds of unity through its elimination and transcending of the party system, was highly attractive and conveyed much of Nazism's dynamic appeal. — Ian Kershaw

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough. — Christopher Hitchens

Social media spark a revelation that we, the people, have a voice, and through the democratization of content and ideas we can once again unite around common passions, inspire movements, and ignite change. — Brian Solis

We are not a religious tradition with a creed, but a religious movement that has always wedded social justice work to theology — James Luther Adams

Changing the structure and rules of the global economy will require a mass movement based on messages of compassion, justice, and equality, as well as collaborative and democratic processes ... If we stay positive, inclusive, and democratic, we have a truly historic opportunity to build a global movement for social justice. — Medea Benjamin

Teenagers have a legitimate voice. We deserve to have a seat at the table and a place in the conversation. We're not exempt from politics and social movements; we're affected by them. — Rowan Blanchard

In other words, "speaking truth" as a social movement may move you forward in some ways, but to really lock in and have real enduring change, it takes both a movement on the ground and an independent political party that is itself the defiance of that two-party corporate big-money control of politics. — Jill Stein

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. — Winston Churchill

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage. — Carl Bernstein

The two great movements of our century -- towards Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community -- are summed up in Anarchist-Communism. — Peter Kropotkin

But we need more than a broader understanding of what is a good society or a moral and political critique of the existing market fundamentalism engulfing American society, we also need to create new forms of solidarity, new and broad based social movements that move beyond the isolated and fractured politics of the current historical moment. — Henry Giroux

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery. — Todd Gitlin

I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

...the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things... They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. — Karl Marx

If we are trying to account for mobilization, we have to ask, under what conditions do outraged forms of knowing lead to social mobilizations and movements? So awareness alone does not suffice, and neither does outrage. — Judith Butler

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace. — Saul Williams

The way you get leaders to care about issues of conscience is to apply political pressure. It's less a question of persuading leaders directly and more trying to build a social movement that holds their feet to the fire. — Nicholas D. Kristof

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