One of the best ways to learn what activists thought, felt, and knew is to read a diverse sampling of engaging activist quotes. Assembled in this blog are fifty or sixty remarkable quotes by activists who were on the front lines, went to jail for their beliefs, or faced social consequences. Heck, many brave activists were jailed for years (Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, etc). America has often led the world when it comes to activism, struggle, strikes, social and economic progress, and political change. Very often, though, activists have to take a back-seat compared to politicians, officers of the law, and for a time, public opinion. Without further ado, I present to you fifty enlightening and challenging quotes by famous activists.
“Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.” ― Edward Bellamy
“Publicity, discussion, and agitation are necessary to accomplish any work of lasting benefit.” ― Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
“The lessons of great men and women are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves; they are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of their highest ideas.” ― Jane Addams
“Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex.” ― Carrie Chapman Catt
“When we consider that labor is the producer of all wealth, is it not evident that the impoverishment and, dependence of labor are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting protection, what labor should demand is freedom. That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom itself should be distrusted.” ― Henry George
“In all cities, the better classes ― the businessmen ― are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.” ― Lincoln Steffens
“In walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make. He can choose the fair and open path, the path which sound ethics, sound democracy, and the common law prescribe, or choose the secret way by which he can get the better of his fellow man.” ― Ida Tarbell
“Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves.” ― Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
“I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there- ‘social justice.’ For that is what I have believed in and fought for.” ― Upton Sinclair
“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.” ― Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“As long as we can put some idealism and reverence back on the global agenda, understanding that corporations and institutions have to be a force for positive change, then there is a light at the end of the tunnel.” ― Anita Roddick
“When a man’s conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.” ― Henry David Thoreau
“Women can be the catalysts for the kind of change we so desperately need to see in our communities and our world; we already have more power than we know.” ― Dolores Huerta
“Your system was liable to periodical convulsions…business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation.” ― Edward Bellamy
“I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation.” ― David Walker
“We must repair our old ship Liberty with some new sails and masts, starting with the public funding of our elections and thereby the removal of special-interest campaign donations. We must stop our laws from being sold to the highest bidder, and our Congress from turning into a bawdy house where anything and everything is done for a price.” ― Doris Haddock
“There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American (worker) whether he is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Visit . . . lands of socialism. You will see a new kind of human being ― one shaped in conditions where deep concern for others is basic, where there is a sense of real togetherness, joined with deep concern for the highest development of individual excellence and initiative.” ― Paul Robeson
There are five or six HUNDRED quotes by famous and remarkable activists in The Wisdom Archive. Check it out. Free. It’s incredible.
“Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.”― Upton Sinclair
“I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.” ― Lucy Stone
“The patriotic thing to do is to aspire to [make] this country the one that our founding fathers thought it should be. Anybody who works hard to do that, whether they’re conservative or liberal, is doing the work of a true American.” ― Michael Moore
“Non-cooperation with injustice is a sacred duty.” ― Mohandas K. Gandhi
“We’re all so isolated: if we had live, ongoing, popular organizations, this wouldn’t be so true. The history of the labor movement in the United States is interesting in this respect, actually; when people were really working together organizing, that overcame the isolation. In fact, it even overcame things like racism and sexism to a great extent.” ― Noam Chomsky
“When cooperation becomes a living reality in the spiritual sense of the term, when we have defined certain broad objectives which we all want to attain, when we can feel the significance of the forces at work not merely in our own lives, not merely in our own class, not merely in our own nation, but in the world as a whole— then the vision of Isaiah and the insight of Christ will be on their way toward realization.” ― Henry A. Wallace
“Why would the citizen tie his or her fate to the nation-state, which is perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives and liberties of its own citizens for the power, the profit, and the glory of politicians or corporate executives or generals?” ― Howard Zinn
“Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” ― Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support…” ― Edward Bellamy
“I have entered the fight against [war] preparedness and against the economic system under which we live. It is to be a fight to the finish, and I ask no quarter.” ~ Helen Keller
“What you farmers need to do is raise less corn and more hell!” ― Mary Elizabeth Lease
“One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.” ―Upton Sinclair
“What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.” ― Henry George
“The threshold we’re at right now is a precious one. The whole world is in our hands, and every one of us has the power to act on that or not. If we do, what will change is us, what we’ll save is ourselves—and what will happen in turn is a deepening of our joy, our sensibilities, and our relationships to our families, our friends, our Earth.” ― Jan Phillips
“If the world were indeed just, I too would be politically conservative. Until then, I propose we decide to make it so! Then we can resist change – and not be morally culpable doing so.” ― Jason Merchey
“The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.” ―Edward Bellamy
“You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn’t like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I’ve been trying to change it ever since.” ― Upton Sinclair
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.” ― William Lloyd Garrison
“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.” ― Henry George
“Patriotism … is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.” ― Emma Goldman
“To establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offense and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.” ― Howard Zinn
“Today, conservative theorists represent themselves as favoring laissez-faire policies; the less government the better. In practice, however, the “free market” system is rooted in state power. Every private corporation in America is publicly chartered, made a legal entity by the state, with ownership rights and privileges protected by the laws, courts, police, and army.” ― Michael Parenti
“There are three ways by which an individual can get wealth – by work, by gift, and by theft. And, clearly, the reasons why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.” ― Henry George
“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” ~ Jane Addams
“Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘It’s business.’ That is, ‘it’s business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.” ― Ida Tarbell
“People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system.” ― Edward Bellamy
“Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.” ― Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
“Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.” ― Lincoln Steffens
“When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success.” ― Edward Bellamy
“The remedy [for the Great Depression] is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others, . . . the American way.” ― Upton Sinclair
There are five or six HUNDRED quotes by famous and remarkable activists in The Wisdom Archive. Check it out. Free. It’s incredible.
“Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.” ― Jacob August Riis
“With a tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it.” ― Edward Bellamy
“The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.” ― Ida B. Wells
“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them?” ― Jane Addams
“To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.” ― Henry George
“Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government.” ― Carrie Chapman Catt
“To make the public sentiment on the side of all that is just and true and noble is the highest use of life.” ― Lucy Stone
“Wretched men, I was moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be helpers of one another, are doomed to be beggars of one another from the least to the greatest!” ― Edward Bellamy
“Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.” ― Lincoln Steffens
“When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings.” ― Julia Ward Howe
“Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable War of one portion of its citizens upon another portion; the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.” ― John Brown
“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.” ― William Lloyd Garrison
“Let no man of us budge one step, and let slaveholders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and tears. “The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears.” ― David Walker
“Now, if the Standard Oil Company were the only concern in the country guilty of the practices which have given it monopolistic power, this story never would have been written. Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices. The methods it employs with such acumen, persistence, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.” ― Ida Tarbell
“The slum is the measure of civilization.” ― Jacob August Riis
“The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.” ― Ida B. Wells
“When the masters of industry pay such sums for a newspaper, they buy not merely the building and the presses and the name; they buy what they call the “good-will”- that is, they buy you. And they proceed to change your whole psychology – everything that you believe about life. You might object to it, if you knew; but they do their work so subtly that you never guess what is happening to you!” ― Upton Sinclair
“Wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism.” ― Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
There are five or six HUNDRED quotes by famous and remarkable activists in The Wisdom Archive. Check it out. Free. It’s incredible.
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