Activist Quotes

Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.

We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?

Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.

I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.

Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.

Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.

Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.

As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use the energy that had developed around my case to create another organization, which we called the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.

Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.

Well of course there's been a great deal of progress over the last 40 years. We don't have laws that segregate black people within the society any longer.

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.

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.

In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.

I'm suggesting that we abolish the social function of prisons.

But at the same time you can't assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life.

Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.

I'm involved in the work around prison rights in general.

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.

I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities.

Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery - did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime.

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation.

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.