Quotes to inspire and reflect

Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.

One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible, and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, overtime, gain in political significance.

Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them, we are coming up. And with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress.

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world . . . would do this, it would change the earth.

If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’

If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

All rights tend to declare themselves absolute to their logical extreme. Yet all in fact are limited by the neighborhood of principles of policy which are other than those on which the particular right is founded, and which become strong enough to hold their own when a certain point is reached.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they [the masses] turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.

Oppression makes the wise man mad.

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’ . . . In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgement.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is the case of kings.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

A Stalin functionary admitted, ‘Innocent people were arrested: naturally—otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.’

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

[Hitler] must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them.

Generally, nobody behaves decently when they have power.