Selected activism quotes

1. I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.

2. The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

3. When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

4. I would adopt a standpoint, irrespective of whether someone was for or against it, if I felt deeply that it was right for the movement.

5. The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.

6. We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.

7. To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

8. I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

9. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

10. No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

11. To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

12. People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.

13. Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

14. If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

15. Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.

16. While liberals appeared to be safely in power, feminists could perhaps afford the luxury of defining Larry Flynt or Roman Polanski as Enemy Number One. Now that we have to cope with Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms, a rethinking of priorities seems in order.

17. Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

18. Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

19. On one level the sixties revolt was an impressive illustration of Lenin's remark that the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.

20. Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

21. If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.

22. It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi.

23. I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man.

24. Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

25. One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.

26. First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?

27. Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead.

28. We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

29. I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

30. The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers - weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.

31. I try to use my music to move these people to act.

32. A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.

33. The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

34. Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

35. The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

36. To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

37. It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.

38. What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.

39. There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

40. There is no good reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

41. 'We were witnesses to that. We saw how the soldiers burned and razed the fields, threw the children out of schools, and turned the schools into barracks... And each time we became more familiar with the Zapatistas form of organization, communal work and cooperation. And I realized that the motives behind the militarization were to break down the community, to keep the people from organizing in an autonomous manner in order to overcome poverty and isolation.'

42. 'Lies, sanctions, and cruise missiles have never created a free and just society. Only everyday people can do that, which is why I'm joining the millions worldwide who have stood up to oppose the Bush administration's attempt to expand the US empire at the expense of human rights at home and abroad. In this spirit, I'm releasing this song for anyone who is willing to listen. I hope it not only makes us think, but also inspires us to act and raise our voices.'

43. 'Why stand on a silent platform? Fight the war, fuck the norm!'

44. 'You know they went after King when he spoke out on Vietnam. He turned the power to the have-nots. And then came the shot'

45. 'Long as the rope is tied around Mumia's neck, let there be no rich white life we bound to respect, cause and effect, can't ya smell tha smoke in tha breeze, my panther, my brother we are at war until you're free'

46. 'Mass graves for the pump and the price is set'

47. 'Ignorance has taken over, we gotta take the power back!'

48. John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he's dead wrong about revolution... find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherfucker's head off.

49. I wonder why we take from our women/Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?/I think it's time to kill for our women/Time to heal our women, be real to our women/And if we don't we'll have a race of babies/That will hate the ladies, that make the babies

50. Remember that the actions of a few, with commitment, can alter the course of world history.

51. As early as January 1934, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was jailed by the Dollfuss Government on account of his Nazi views and sent with other leading National Socialists into the concentration camp Kaisersteinbruch. He caused and led a hunger strike and forced the government to dismiss 490 National Socialist prisoners. In the following year he was jailed again, because of suspicion of high treason, and committed to the court martial of Wels (Upper Danube). After an investigation of many months, the accusation of high treason collapsed; but he was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment for subversive activities. After the spring of 1935, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian SS, the right to practice his profession having been suspended because of his National Socialist views. It rebounds to his credit that in this important position he succeeded through energetic leadership in maintaining the unity of the Austrian SS, which he had built up, in spite of all persecution, and succeeded in committing it successfully at the right moment.

52. I want my contribution to help end the suffering of rabbits and other animals now being poisoned and killed by the makers of Tide, Crest and Crisco. ~ On donating some of her royalties from 'White Rabbit' to PETA

53. At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream,' was prepared to ask the right question: 'Which side is the federal government on?' That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force. John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a 'cooling-off period,' a moratorium on Freedom Rides.

54. We are all guilty. We decided to become part of a solution instead of just complaining

55. I became involved with this organization called MoveOn.org, and I got into it right in the middle of some serious stuff. So when I made some anti-Bush comments, I got this flood of emails from right wing supporters. I really wish I could say that they were productive emails but basically it was, 'Fuck you you dirty Chink cunt bitch fag-hag. Go back to your country. Four more years! Dirty Chink dyke slut! Jesus saves!' So I posted them on my website, including the return-addresses, and some of these people wrote me from their work emails. So I had their work information, their names, their addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, Blockbuster card numbers, favourite flavour of ice-cream. And the thing is, I guess I have this whole fanbase that is ready to go to bat for me. They're already pissed off, so they just need half a reason. And basically I discovered Al Gay-da. They are a sleeper cell you do not want to wake up. So suddenly these people are emailing me back: 'Please take my info off of your site. I'm so sorry. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I shouldn't have said what I said. And please make these gay people go away. Please, hurry! I think Cirque de Soleil is warming up on my front lawn!

56. As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and engagement. Just the other day I was sitting in a radio studio waiting for a satellite arrangement abroad to be set up. The engineers were putting together interviews with Bob Dylan from about 1966-7 or so (judging by the references), and I was listening (I'd never heard him talk before -- if you can call that talking). He sounded as though he was so drugged he was barely coherent, but the message got through clearly enough through the haze. He said over and over that he'd been through all of this protest thing, realized it was nonsense, and that the only thing that was important was to live his own life happily and freely, not to 'mess around with other people's lives' by working for civil and human rights, ending war and poverty, etc. He was asked what he thought about the Berkeley 'free speech movement' and said that he didn't understand it. He said something like: 'I have free speech, I can do what I want, so it has nothing to do with me. Period.' If the capitalist PR machine [term used in the question] wanted to invent someone for their purposes, they couldn't have made a better choice.

57. I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby - I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters... 'Betrayal'... 'Confrontation'... 'Management'... My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.

58. Cops give a damn about a negro/pull the trigger kill a nigga, he's a hero

59. Down to die, for everything I represent/Meant every word, in my letter to the President

60. When they ask me, when will the violence cease?/When your troops stop shootin niggaz down in the street

61. This ain't bout talkin bout problems, I bring solutions/Where's the restitution, stipulated through the constitution

62. [at Rock the Bells, New York, 2007] 'A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated. Nah, what we said was that he should be brought to trial as war criminal and hung and shot. THAT'S what we said. And we don't back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq. They're the ones. And what they refused to air which was far more provocative in my mind and in the minds of my bandmates is this: this system has become so brutal and vicious and cruel that it needs to start wars and profit from the destruction around the world in order to survive as a world power. THAT's what we said. And we refuse not to stand up, we refuse to back down from that position not only for the poor kids who are being left out in the desert to die, but for the Iraqi youth, the Iraqi people, their families and their friends, and their youth who are standing up and resisting the U.S. occupation every day. And if we truly want to end this fucking miserable war, we have to stand up with the same force that the Iraqi youth are standing up with every day, and bring these motherfuckers to their knees. Wake up:'

63. [at Rock the Bells, San Francisco, California, 2007] 'Every once in a while, people forget who really has power in this country. People forget who really holds power here, and you look at them helicopters coming in over the White House lawn and all the press gathered up, and all their security, and all their banks, and all their punk ass police, and you want to believe that our last powers there, up top at the center putting forth position in the world, you want to think it and you want to consider them to have the decency to look out for your best interests everyday, but for me as a mexicano I know I do not answer, that should never be the case, its never been their military, their propoganda, their machine, their punk ass police, their presidents, their politicians, its you that has power, its us that has power, and here, and here a few years ago on that day in March as Bush was taking this country to war for a lie, I stood with you here in San Francisco as you took this whole fucking city over, and I was with you, and right now the whole world is watching us, we can be the greatest generation, we can take facism out of power in the United States and if you don't think thats what it is thats exactly it. We're going to take a lot of sacrifice, a lot of jail time, maybe even a little bit of death, but I'm sure dropping a co-op onto these rich white crackers that don't know shit about the world we know cause rich in this world can go in and have nothing amount to them anymore. Wake up!''

64. 'We've got to regain knowledge again, and we've got to regain an understanding again, of who we are. Not just those chosen to fuel systems, but individuals who have the power to criticize and analyze, and attack injustice when it becomes prevalent and apparent in front of our faces like it is in ours right now. We've been all put to sleep. Put to sleep to a system. A system that continues to perpetrate ignorance amongst our spirit and amongst our minds. One that wants you not to act. A system that would rather see all of you at that bar drinking beer filling your minds being put to sleep with beer or with drugs rather than acting against it and fighting a system which has been perpetrating imperialist lies and other fucking bullshit for five hundred years. So fuckin drink up or fuckin wake up. You're part of the solution or you're part of the fuckin problem. I am sick and tired of my own complacence in my life and I know I'm fuckin sick of yours. So wake up and stop fuckin sleeping. Wake Up.'

65. The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

66. If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

67. Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

68. The rights of women are being trampled by George Bush.

69. Phil, screw you and your Nazi friends; we're now going to sing a folk song.

70. And I always thought: the very simplest words Must be enough. When I say what things are like Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds. That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself Surely you see that.

71. 'Too many of us dissipate our energy by being 'for all good causes,' attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions - all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves: We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.'

72. 'If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.'

73. 'If you're so pro-life, don't lock arms and block medical clinics, lock arms and block cemeteries. Let's see how committed you are to this premise.'

74. I think everybody who has a brain should get involved in politics. Working within. Not criticizing it from the outside. Become an active participant, no matter how feeble you think the effort is.

75. I know very few who are willing to die for their convictions. I wouldn't be hit on the head with a billy club or have mace squirted in my face. When I was younger and a radical at American University maybe: as a matter of fact, I was at the march on the Pentagon just last year, right in the front taking pictures, just being there to find out what was happening, and I was knocked down and stepped on. I don't want to do that again. It didn't accomplish anything. They lied about everything that happened. Everything in the newspapers were just lies.

76. Let's take the people who have latent thoughts about maybe the United States isn't always right. They hear a song like 'Give a Damn' and maybe it'll awaken them. If it makes you cross that bridge between apathy and effective participation, that's great. There's so much talk about the Drug Generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life. Music can play a huge part, because it's the international communicative force.

77. We, the undersigned, gathered in Pilgrimage to the capital of the State in Sacramento in penance for all the failings of Farm Workers as free and sovereign men, do solemnly declare before the civilized world which judges our actions, and before the nation to which we belong, the propositions we have formulated to end the injustice that oppresses us.

78. What do we want the Church to do? We don't ask for more cathedrals. We don't ask for bigger churches of fine gifts. We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us. We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and for love of brother. We don't ask for words. We ask for deeds. We don't ask for paternalism. We ask for servanthood.

79. Many people will tell you of his wonderful qualities and his many accomplishments, but what makes him special to me, the truth many people don't want you to remember, is that Dr. king was a great activist, fighting for radical social change with radical methods. While other people talked about change, Dr. King used direct action to challenge the system. He welcomed it, and used it wisely.

80. Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That's why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.

81. My motivation to change these injustices came from my personal life : from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up; from what we experienced as migrant farm workers in California.

82. Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.

83. Non-violence means people in action. People have to understand that with non-violence goes a hell of a lot of organization.

84. Once people understand the strength of nonviolence, the force it generates, the love it creates, the response it brings from the total community, they will not easily abandon it.

85. Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life.

86. Our struggle is not easy. Those that oppose our cause are rich and powerful, and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our own bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.

87. People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital. The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature.

88. The name of the game is to talk to people. If you don't talk to people, you can't get started... You knock on twenty doors or so, and twenty guys tell you to go to hell, or that they haven't got time. But maybe at the fortieth or sixtieth house you find the one guy who is all you need. You're not going to organize everything; you're just going to get it started.

89. The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

90. The thing that we have going for us is that people are willing to sacrifice themselves.

91. There's no turning back...We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart...

92. Until the chance for political participation is there, we who are poor will continue to attack the soft part of the American system - its economic structure. We will build power through boycotts, strikes, new union - whatever techniques we can develop. These attacks on the status quo will come, not because we hate, but because we know America can construct a humane society for all its citizens - and that if it does not, there will chaos.

93. We are organizers at heart. Most of us in the movement take great pride in being able to put things together.

94. We can choose to use our lives for others to bring about a better and more just world for our children. People who make that choice will know hardship and sacrifice. But if you give yourself totally to the non-violent struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone. And in giving of yourself you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.

95. We shall strike. We shall organize boycotts. We shall demonstrate and have political campaigns. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons and daughters of the farm workers' revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking bread and justice.

96. We're going to pray a lot and picket a lot.

97. Of course one can jump up and down yelling Europe ! Europe ! Europe ! But it amounts to nothing and it means nothing.

98. I think right about now we have to beware of marketed Malcolms and Martins. Real people do real things.

99. 'You seek up a big monster for him to fight your wars for you'

100. Other people have called me a 'human rights' activist. I don't mind the label, but I don't think I'd go so far. It puts me on par with other extraordinary activists. I'm just an average guy with a bigger mouth than average.