Quotes About Activists

#1. I don't want to offend people and I don't want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel. I think the greatest social activists are comedians.

Alanis Morissette

#2. I've been active in a minor way compared to professional activists. I was a labor leader. I led two labor strikes. I've manipulated boards. I've led marches. I've done many things.

Gerald Stern

#3. You want to know who's now running the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the Marines and calling the shots where it counts? Fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists.

Bryan Fischer

#4. What America is thirsting for now is a battalion of strong, down-to-earth 'doers' - managers, frontline activists, business and social entrepreneurs engaged in tackling America's manifold problems of unemployment, education, and competitive slouch.

Tina Brown

#5. Politics can be very mean and dirty. The things politicians say about each other, and what activists say, I had a brief glimpse of that for a couple of days. If I ever had any questions about whether I wanted to run for office, I now know the answer - I don't.

Matt Hasselbeck

#6. Over the years, HIV/AIDS activists and their allies have been pioneers in creating new frontiers in the medical establishment. Through their efforts, the FDA drug approval procedures were reformed so promising new therapies could reach desperate patients quicker.

David Mixner

#7. In part, slacktivism is what happens when the energy of otherwise dedicated activists is wasted on approaches that are less effective than the alternatives.

Evgeny Morozov

#8. There are many cases of activists having their Facebook pages and accounts deactivated at critical times, when they are right in the middle of a campaign or organising a demonstration.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#9. I've once gotten in trouble with certain gay activists because I'm not gay enough! I am a morose homosexual. I'm melancholy. Gay is the last adjective I would use to describe myself. The idea of being gay, like a little sparkler, never occurs to me. So if you ask me if I'm gay, I say no.

Richard Rodriguez

#10. I have 2 million Twitter followers. Some of those people are also yogis and activists and people who really go out and make a difference. I do as much as I can with my voice. It's effortless in some cases. I try to remind everybody that they have that kind of voice.

Russell Simmons

#11. Most activists on the Left believe that they, not only their values, are morally superior to their adversaries. Therefore, coercing people to adhere to 'progressive' values is morally acceptable, even demanded.

Dennis Prager

#12. When you educate yourself about clitoredectomies, infibulation, forced prostitution, rape as a war tactic, patriarchal religions, women painters, filmmakers, poets, writers, activists, politicians, sex-industry workers, historians, archelogoists and musicians, that's self-protection.

Inga Muscio

#13. One of the most enduring lessons I learned in my youth: Activists do not save the masses. The masses save themselves. Activists, like politicians, are just there to take credit for it.

Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

#14. When trouble strikes, which it always does - bad economy, bad quarter, activists, takeover - when trouble strikes, those board members who don't understand or are not committed are not helpful.

Carol Bartz

#15. For every reader and writer of steampunk fiction, there are probably hundreds or thousands of other activists who gleefully embrace some non-written manifestation of the steampunk ethos.

Paul Di Filippo

#16. Ultimately, the Indian public is not fool. They can spot the difference between what is said for effect and what is done in reality. Whether it is politicians or actors or social activists, they know for sure whom to trust or not.

Rahul Bose

#17. Establishment women just get mad. Activists change the laws.

Nancy Ruth

#18. One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think - even the activists - that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: 'Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?'

Noam Chomsky

#19. Once you feel the desire to engage, think about what you're good at and what you can contribute. It's about breaking down the idea that there are activists and ordinary people.

Avi Lewis

#20. You know what the problem that animal activists sometimes have? They only concentrate on the heartbreaking things to the point where the general public thinks, 'Oh, here comes those animal folks again and I'm going to hear all the things I don't want to hear.'

Betty White

#21. I don't have the activist temperament. I like listening to divergent points of view and hearing people out. I like getting along. I even like being liked, although activists of any stripe should get rid of that handicap at the outset.

Victoria Moran

#22. I don't want to play these games of statistics any more; I have done that. I don't want to be imprisoned by that, or by the morality that is expected of activists. I have never been that pristine person, that role model.

Arundhati Roy

#23. Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.

John Trudell

#24. My fans are activists they will fight with you to defend me.

Michael Jackson

#25. I argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.

Dean Spade

#26. I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.

Pearl Cleage

#27. I oppose the attempts of homosexual activists to treat homosexual activity as a civil right to be protected and promoted by the government.

Todd Akin

#28. Indeed, while so much in education reform can divide activists into warring camps, expanding learning time unites reformers around a shared vision of bringing excellence and breadth to our nation's most impoverished and struggling schools.

Chris Gabrieli

#29. Faced with a brass band that was positioned to drown out free speech, Russian activists reacted to the potential confrontation with lemons. With activists eating lemons or pretending to, involuntary saliva reaction of the band made it impossible for them to interrupt.

Masha Gessen

#30. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society.

Theodore Kaczynski

#31. In the past it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB ... used to torture in order to get this data.

Evgeny Morozov

#32. This week a group of activists, known as Anonymous, hacked the Twitter account of the KKK. The KKK is furious. They said Anonymous is just a bunch of cowards who don't have the courage to show their faces.

Conan O'Brien

#33. No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different.

Camille Paglia

#34. The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.

Temple Grandin

#35. If there are activists in Cosas and they do poorly academically, then they would be cited as examples as to why others should not be in Cosas.

Kgalema Motlanthe

#36. If a doctor said you had stomach cancer, would you consult Rush Limbaugh for a second opinion? Of course, that sounds like nonsense, but many Americans have no qualms about listening to political commentators and untrained activists when it comes to even more complex scientific questions.

Kurt Eichenwald

#37. It's truly hard to understand how liberal politicians, activists and journalists so consistently escape accountability for stoking the flames of racial disharmony while purporting to dampen them and for dividing our society along racial, gender, and economic lines while claiming to unite us.

David Limbaugh

#38. Artists and activists offend the sensibilities of the rule-bound when they interfere with people"s ability to accept things in the private realm as long as they are not made part of the structure of the law.

Martha Rosler

#39. O.K., helplessness is repugnant to me, as a father, as a piece of protoplasm. My parents were activists. I don't believe you can't do anything.

Marshall Brickman

#40. At a certain point, we saw the police cracking down on the Occupy Wall Street activists. I won't call the actions of police appropriate or inappropriate.

Vladimir Putin

#41. It was a common tactic used by Southern politicians during civil rights protests: Sue national media outlets for defamation if they provide sympathetic coverage of activists or if they characterize Southern politicians and law enforcement officers unfavorably.

Bryan Stevenson

#42. On March 5, 2011, protesters stormed the Egyptian state security headquarters. In real time, activists shared their discoveries on Twitter as they moved through a building that had until recently been one of the Mubarak regime's largest torture facilities.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#43. Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

Ben Edwards

#44. The poets and artists and philosophers, resistance activists, secret scouts and troublemakers, had become, as they must, soldiers. Now,

China Mieville

#45. Activists need to get the facts right. One of the big assets we have on our side is the truth, and we lose credibility and power if w e're loose with that.

Annie Leonard

#46. Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes.

Don Aitkin

#47. The Chipko activists have always been close to my parents, since my father was among the few forestry officials who supported them within the bureaucracy. And I was involved with the Chipko movement in my student days.

Vandana Shiva

#48. I was proud to march beside some of the most notable Civil Rights activists, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery.

Charles B. Rangel

#49. It's pretty rare to have CEOs or high level executives at big companies who are social activists. They tend not to be drawn to those areas of life.

Jerry Greenfield

#50. Progressive activists are angry that a Medicare-for-all single-payer approach was totally ignored during the health care debate.

Bernie Sanders

#51. The big difference between animal liberation activists and other so-called 'terrorists' is the targets; no innocent victims are ever targeted in animal lib campaigns. If you are not abusing and exploiting animals, there is no need to fear for one's safety.

Jerry Vlasak

#52. The only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if America beats Washington and tea party activists take over this process.

Matt Kibbe

#53. Activists are killed in Mexico.

Gloria Trevi

#54. We need to protect our wilderness areas and national parks. Everywhere you travel, you see blight, denuded mountains, logging. If people know what's going on, they'll become activists to safeguard those places.

Christie Brinkley

#55. This great American institution [Boy Scouts of America] has come under attack from homosexual activists-who may well set their sights on your church next.

Jay Sekulow

#56. The Occupy Wall Street movement faltered when activists realized that traders were quite busy already.

The Covert Comic

#57. Publicly inconsolable about the fact that racism continues, these activists seem privately terrified that it has abated.

Dinesh D'Souza

#58. I join with Governor Rick Snyder and thousands of grassroots supporters and activists from across the state of Michigan in asking you all to please help me in supporting Pete Hoekstra, who I am proud to endorse. He will be our next United States senator.

Candice S. Miller

#59. Women are in positions of power the most radical of activists could only dream of in 1960.

Cathleen Schine

#60. Most people who are activists and are concerned about issues get their information from sources which reinforce their opinions and give them the facts that they want to hear.

Barney Frank

#61. Vegans are still considered as sort of "out there," a fringe group of animal rights activists with pasty skin and protein issues. However,

Steven D. Levitt

#62. A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it.

Jeff Cooper

#63. Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

Michael Franti

#64. Can a conservative work safely and soundly in a union environment - in a shop filled with union workers, activists, voters and life-long supporters of the Democrat Party? You betcha.

Joe Wurzelbacher

#65. I believe people who practice their beliefs in daily life are activists.

Jasmine Guy

#66. Statistics in the hands of activists have power.

Ela Bhatt

#67. In the fall of 1996, I sat inside weekly strategy meetings of conservative activists as part of research for my book, 'Gang of Five,' chronicling the rise of the baby-boomer Right.

Nina Easton

#68. The spirit of the Internet. This spirit is a powerful myth concocted by overzealous legal activists, and the sooner we bury it, the better.

Evgeny Morozov

#69. I don't think we need political activists on the Supreme Court or any other level of court.

Dick Mountjoy

#70. You need companies investing in these countries, so women have employment opportunities, and you also need these forces of conscience. Without the activists, in the United States we would still have child labor, we would still have 16-hour days.

Pietra Rivoli

#71. My parents were civil rights activists, and my mother was active in the feminist movement. Issues concerning marginalized people and especially women of color were what they cared about most in the world.

Anna Holmes

#72. Love and Politics should be on the reading list of all activists and academics seeking to understand how feminist theory gives perspective and power to strategy and action. Charlotte Bunch, author of Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action

Carol Anne Douglas

#73. Political activists rarely like fiction of any kind. Literature is about ambiguity, mixed emotions, and guilty pleasures. Politics is about ideals and action.

Christopher Bram

#74. I think it's very important to invite and encourage people to talk about climate change who have a lay understanding. In general, there is a lot of confusion among climate activists about the role of science, that scientists should be social and political leaders of this movement.

Margaret D. Klein

#75. Most people, especially activists, recognize their differences with others rather than what they have in common and that leads to frustration more than persuasion.

Dan Mathews

#76. I think that compared to other politicians who have been put in jail in the past, compared to the human-rights activists in history who have had to face political prosecution, the activists in Hong Kong nowadays are already quite lucky compared to that.

Joshua Wong

#77. It's just impossible to ignore the activists in your party. These are the people who stuff the envelopes, and walk the precincts, and make the telephone calls, and do all the so-called grunt work that brings about a successful campaign.

Pat Robertson

#78. Most Tea Party activists consider Obama a big-spending liberal. Some even question his eligibility to be president.

Ron Fournier

#79. I was a Republican, and I saw the activists and what they were doing; it was intolerable to me.

Charlie Crist

#80. I'd never have thought of the residents of those neighbourhoods as community activists, though it did make sense that, if they were going to protest anything, it would be the possibility of gay sex in their immediate vicinity.

Drew Nellins Smith

#81. I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers.

Ken Livingstone

#82. I really encourage people to travel so we can see how the rest of the world views our country. That's really important. Secondly, as artists, activists, and citizens who vote, we have to begin to vote from our heart.

Michael Franti

#83. The fact that the federal government is the nation's greatest environmental villain has not stopped activists from reflexively turning to politicians to "protect the environment."

David Bergland

#84. You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

Billy Bragg

#85. Democratic politicians, liberal activists and liberal news outlets routinely deploy incendiary rhetoric and wicked accusations to marginalize Republicans.

Gary Bauer

#86. We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

Marian Wright Edelman

#87. I call it small government, grass-roots activism: The Tea Party activists are a part of it, FreedomWorks is part of it. FreedomWorks is the longest-standing, most active organization within this movement.

Dick Armey

#88. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists.

Paul Hawken

#89. Advocacy is better served when fellow activists are able to respond in ways that do not build walls or burn bridges. Change takes time and tends to come hard to human beings. Those who understand this human tendency are more effective activists.

Lisa Kemmerer

#90. Maybe more climate activists will think about the climate change not as an international problem to be resolved in an air-conditioned meeting hall, but as a guerilla war to be fought in the streets.

Jeff Goodell

#91. There's a worldwide linking of environmental activists, developmental experts and human rights advocates. And they're using the two frameworks, in particular environmental standards and human rights.

Mary Robinson

#92. Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be urged to adhere to business practices that maximize the safety of activists using their platforms.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#93. The winner in a political contest is determined by the number and the effectiveness of the activists on the respective sides.

Morton Blackwell

#94. Journalists are simply leftists disguised as reporters. They're political activists disguised as reporters.

Rush Limbaugh

#95. Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.

Lance Loud

#96. Political activists of all stripes are usually a wacky bunch, and never more so than in a system like Britain's, where power is effected via the quiescence of the electorate as much as its convictions.

Will Self

#97. Since Brazil became a democracy in 1975 over 1700 Activists and small Farmers have been murdered in Brazil alone over land reforms and the rainforest !

Norbert F Hoffmann Jr

#98. We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents

Hal Herzog

#99. After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organised a People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140 countries - not just representatives of governments, but also civil society and activists.

Noam Chomsky

#100. The challenging of repression by a new generation of activists - from Malala Yousafzai to Pussy Riot - across the globe reminded us how many women are still fighting for basic human rights. Our great-grandmothers' struggle in all its shocking detail seemed so relevant.

Sarah Gavron