Inspirational Quotes
The big dividing line is not between those who advocate more or less militant forms of resistance, or between mainstream and grassroots activists. The dividing line is between those who do something and those who do nothing. -Derrick Jensen
If we allowed ourselves to think in a way that really was thinking and to feel in a way that really was feeling, we would suddenly understand what we need to do in order to stop the horrors ― and we would start to do it. -Derrick Jensen
Once you break your identification with the dominant culture, it's no longer you that is what's wrong, but rather the culture. So break your identification with the culture and then get to work stopping capitalism. -Derrick Jensen
What are your gifts and how can you use them in the service of your landbase? What does your landbase most need from you? What do you want to do? And perhaps most important of all: What are you willing to do? -Derrick Jensen
The cure for despair is not hope. It's discovering what we want to do about something we care about. -Margaret Wheatley
One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. -Hannah Senesh
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. -Ernesto Che Guevara
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness. -Arundhati Roy
We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. -Arundhati Roy
Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable. -Arundhati Roy
Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear. -Lierre Keith
My planet is being murdered and I've got three questions: What is that murder made of? Who is in charge? How do we stop them? -Lierre Keith
MEND has told the oil industry, “Leave our land or you will die in it.” Are we willing to say “Leave our mountains, our wetlands, our last ancient trees, our kin of feathers and fur?” Are we willing to fight for this planet? -Lierre Keith
Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible ― it’s to dismantle those systems. -Lierre Keith
A political resistance goes on day and night, under cover and over ground, where people can see it and people can’t. It is taught. It is encouraged. It is celebrated. It is smart. It is committed. And someday it will win. -Andrea Dworkin
If a creature learns to completely accept captivity or slavery, they can suppress the pain. But if one wants to be free, one has to face the pain; one has to agonize, to suffer, through all of the terror. -Jack Forbes
When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. -Audre Lorde
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side. -Audre Lorde
The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out are precious catalysts for change. -Howard Zinn
There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. -Howard Zinn
When justice comes and when injustices are remedied, they’re not remedied by the initiative of the national government or the politicians. They only respond to the power of social movements. -Howard Zinn
Only power can effect the enforcement and adoption of a given policy. Power and pressure do not flow from the masses, as such. Power is the active principle of only the organized masses, united for a definite purpose. -A. Philip Randolph
Some of the laws of revolution are so simple they seem impossible. The basis of any struggle is people coming together to fight against a common enemy. -Assata Shakur
We have spent too much time in thinking, supposing that if we weigh in advance the possibilities of any action, it will happen automatically. But action comes not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cowardice asks “Is it safe?”, Expediency “Is it politic?”, Vanity “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks “Is it right?” Sometimes one must take a position that is neither safe, politic, nor popular, but is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something. -Samuel Butler
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. -Frederick Douglass
Revolution is the sound of your heart still beating. And as long as it is, you have work to do. Do it. Without apology. Do it. Bravely and nobly. Do it. Exist, insist and by all means, resist." -Dominique Christina
