Top 100 Activist Quotes
#1. I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
Gloria Reuben
#2. The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.
Tony Kushner
#3. Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy.
Jay Carney
#4. Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle
#5. You all know I have terminal cancer-and I have a lot of it. But what you may not know is that stress induces its spread and induces its activity. Stress may even bring it on. Yet stress is the fuel of the activist.
Tom McCall
#6. Oh external worshiper, know that worship without heart is motions. Oh seeker of knowledge, know that knowledge without purification is a dangerous weapon of the ego. Oh activist, know that work without orientation of heart is fruitless. Oh lover, know that love without God is pain.
Yasmin Mogahed
#7. If you aren't an activist you're an inactivist.
Ric O'Barry
#8. I am still a journeyman actor and a peace and justice activist. I'm a pilgrim trying to win my freedom and serve as best I can in the time I have, with this gift I've been given.
Martin Sheen
#9. The trouble with being an activist is you end up like Eve and you get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. You know, Eve was the first person who thought for herself. And she still gets a bad rap. I named my daughter after her.
Susan Sarandon
#10. The activist is not the person who says the river is dirty. The activist is the person who cleans up the river
H. Ross Perot
#11. I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.
Al Sharpton
#12. You know, I was a community activist, so I'm used to standing out in front of an elected official's office and protesting.
Karen Bass
#13. I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.
Rachel Corrie
#14. The surface causes of Adams's anxieties are not difficult to discern. Every activist knew the penalty for treason. Every congressman knew that prison, perhaps death, would be his reward if the American rebellion failed.
John Ferling
#15. I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an activist, I'm a writer and I'm just a student of the world.
Michael J. Fox
#16. If you join the rat race - you're in the race of rats.
Bertolt Brecht
#17. I have referred to myself as an accidental activist on more than one occasion.
Joan Blades
#19. I was very active. I was always all over the place trying to do a million things, just into this activity. If you asked me when I was 14 what I wanted to be: "Activist, first, is my occupation. I am an activist."
Lauryn Hill
#21. Bush always has viewed himself as an "activist," which flies in the face of some conservative notions, such as the federal government's role in education.
Robert Draper
#22. As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.
Eli Broad
#23. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.
Charb
#24. Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings -- spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart.
Mahalia Jackson
#26. I'm not an activist per se, but I have strong feelings about things. People can jump on celebrities for being ill-informed or naive, but I've got a right to say what I believe.
Ed Harris
#27. The things that are important to me - being a mother, a businesswoman, an activist - are all things that were borne out of great passion.
Elizabeth Taylor
#28. Every woman with a career has to make sacrifices when it comes to her children. It's no different with me, as a political activist, than with businesswomen, of which there are thankfully more and more in Russia. Or a female cabinet minister.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
#29. I have an activist's desire to improve people's lives.
Bill De Blasio
#30. I'm not a celebrity, I'm an activist. The fact that when I see truth it's really hard for me to sit back and just allow it to happen in front of me on my clock makes me, a lot of times, a bad celebrity.
Kanye West
#31. A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.
Sam Ervin
#32. Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job.
Eric Holder
#33. For a man who makes his salvation perfect through suffering, is more of a saint and a loving hero of nature.
Auliq Ice
#34. I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.
Barry McGee
#35. I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance,
Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance
You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.
Saul Williams
#36. I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed, for a variety of - well, for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.
Barney Frank
#37. 'The Red' is the first book in a trilogy that gained a big following as a self-published e-book, and is now out in paper from Saga. It introduces us to reluctant hero Shelley, a former anti-war activist who chooses to join the military rather than serve jail time after being arrested at a protest.
Annalee Newitz
#38. I think Mr. Cosby has always been very much an activist and a big proponent of African-American pride. That's how 'The Cosby Show' came about. I think in his older years, he has gotten a lot more direct and vocal about it. But I think he only wants the best for all of us.
Keshia Knight Pulliam
#39. I've called myself an accidental activist because I came to it not on purpose.
Jenny Slate
#40. As Jim Lawrence, a black labor activist at a GM plant in Dayton, Ohio, describes it, during the 1960s 'the union gave foremen a blank check to mistreat blacks and keep them out of the high-rate machine jobs and the skilled trades.'
David T. Hardy
#41. Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.
Shannon L. Alder
#42. I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.
Anne Lamott
#43. I have spent all my life advocating on behalf of the poor, oppressed and marginalized. As a social justice and human rights activist, and now as President of the Republic of Malawi, I have a deep appreciation for the challenges of those on the margins of society.
Joyce Banda
#44. When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist and as an anti-war activist, I heard about what was happening to women, and I wanted to do something to support those folks.
Deborah Ellis
#45. I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights.
David Duke
#46. The Tunisian blogger and activist Sami Ben Gharbia has written passionately about how U.S. government involvement in grassroots digital spaces can endanger those who are already vulnerable to accusations by nasty regimes of acting as foreign agents.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#48. People no longer want to see themselves primarily as consumers, but as activists.
Mal Fletcher
#49. It didn't help when Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael made his notorious comment to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: "The position of women in SNCC is prone.
Ariel Levy
#50. Mark Ruffalo, aka the Incredible Hulk, is the natural gas industry's worst nightmare: a serious, committed activist who is determined to use his star power as a superhero in the hottest movie of the moment to draw attention the environmental and public health risks of fracking.
Jeff Goodell
#51. This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life.
Tom McCall
#52. Obviously the transgender movement has not progressed in the way that the gay and lesbian movement has. But I'm an activist - that's just the kind of person I am.
Chaz Bono
#53. I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.
Bram Cohen
#54. I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie.
Dorothy Allison
#55. The goal for most people should not be to feel better, but to get better at feeling.
Shannon L. Alder
#56. 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
#57. Some believed that Satan had come to earth in human form as a party activist, his collective farm register a book of hell, promising torment and damnation.
Timothy Snyder
#58. I want to state clearly that I am a humanitarian, not an activist. I do not follow any agendas - only that of humanity, not only in Saudi Arabia, but all over the world.
Basmah Bint Saud
#59. I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you ... And you ... And you ... Gotta give em hope.
Harvey Milk
#61. Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.
Norman Mailer
#62. When they put me in jail, that's when they turned me into an activist. Up until the time I went to jail, I was just a comedian.
Tommy Chong
#63. I find myself walking these lines. Like I might be an artist, but I also might be an activist. And I'm trying to be both in a way that honors both and doesn't stray too far into either.
Chris Jordan
#64. I don't like calling myself a "feminist" only because I don't think I've done anything active enough to call myself one. It'd be like calling myself a civil rights activist just because I'm not racist.
Bo Burnham
#65. I'm so glad I didn't become a doctor, because I do more than any doctor can do. I am an administrator, a CEO, doctor, psychiatrist, an activist, a campaign funder. I think I did well.
Dikembe Mutombo
#66. I'm a novelist, I'm not an activist. I'm not a non-fiction writer, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a foodie, I'm not even really an animal person, or an environmentalist. I did the best I could with this, but it's not who I am.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#67. A robust Liberian middle-class fosters the advancement of social wealth and a well-educated Liberian society.
Henry Johnson Jr
#68. As a chef and activist, I'm particularly concerned with food politics issues such as the farm bill.
Marcus Samuelsson
#69. I coach a high school wrestling team and a middle school team. I consider myself a coach and an activist, so I'm really involved in the community.
Nate Parker
#70. Sacred Activism is the fusion of the mystic's passion for God with the activist's passion for justice, creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing.
Andrew Harvey
#71. All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.
John Trudell
#72. Rosa Parks' entire career has been one as working as a civil rights activist.
Douglas Brinkley
#73. When I hear the words 'activist filmmaking,' I think of somebody who's an activist, who wants to prove a particular point.
Jehane Noujaim
#75. White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn't threatening
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#76. I'm not an activist at all. I'm a filmmaker, and I wanted the people involved to tell their own story.
Roger Ross Williams
#77. I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.
Susan Sarandon
#78. 16 days of activism? I don't know about you folks, but I'm an activist every single day.
Christina Engela
#79. And the passiveness, you know, the apathy, well, that's not responsible citizenship. When I'm asked, why am I an activist, I say, well that's the rent that I pay for living on this planet, okay?
Ray McGovern
#80. My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.
Joely Richardson
#81. The place to find the explanation for the liberal-activist mindset of the courts is in the political arena.
Stockwell Day
#82. Words are fossilized butterfly wings,
pretty to look at sometimes,
but only good for Museums.
I want to miserably burn down the Museums.
Jeremiah Walton
#83. You have to draw lines between being a journalist and an activist.
Michael Pollan
#85. Judge Samuel Alito, millions of Americans are concerned about your nomination. They're worried that you would be a judicial activist who would restrict our rights and freedoms.
Dick Durbin
#86. Social media is not just another way to connect feminist and activist voices - it amplifies our messages as well.
Jessica Valenti
#87. Dignity is never silent. It has a voice, heart and soul. Truth and courage is its foundation. It will stand against the masses and speak the truth. Because every great person has always done what others found fear in doing.
Shannon L. Alder
#88. Unless I have hallucinated, I have never made an anti-gay commentary, I have made anti-gay-activist-agenda commentaries.
Laura Schlessinger
#89. For all the idealism that propels him through the story, if you read between the lines you may see that at a moment which he considers a defining point in his life as an activist, he's also set the stage for potential ugliness down the road.
James Vance
#90. American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.
Frederick Douglass
#91. I haven't been a gay activist. I haven't protested for gay rights or none of that, but one thing I can say is that a lot of the designers I wear are gay and I like their clothes.
ASAP Rocky
#92. We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great, great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist.
David Oyelowo
#93. New concepts should be introduced by the power of imagery.
Douglas Coop
#94. When you have friends, don't expect your friends to fill your emptiness. When you get married, don't expect your spouse to fulfill your every need. When you're an activist, don't put your hope in the results. When you're in trouble don't depend on yourself. Don't depend on people. Depend on Allah.
Yasmin Mogahed
#95. My mom was an environmental activist in Australia in the late '60s and '70s, and I guess I've inherited that awareness from her.
Robin McLeavy
#97. When you're a 20-something grassroots activist, and you're deciding how to spend your time and money to make a difference, it makes a lot of sense to cause a million in damage with just $100 of investment. That's a better return than any other form of activism I've been involved in.
Rod Coronado
#98. There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#99. I didn't wake up and decide to become an activist. But you couldn't help notice the inequities, the injustices. It was all around you.
Yuri Kochiyama
#100. Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.
Terry Teachout
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