Yuri Kochiyama Quotes

#1. I lived in San Pedro, California, which is, you know, on the west side of California, and it's where many, many Japanese lived.

Yuri Kochiyama

#2. Every action ('doing') causes bondage. 'Doing' is not needed for Liberation. For liberation, 'action' of Knowledge is required. Action of ignorance [of the self] is bondage. Action done with egoism is known as ignorant-action and the action done without egoism is known as knowledge-action.

Dada Bhagwan

#3. So, transform yourself first ... Because you are young and have dreams and want to do something meaningful, that in itself, makes you our future and our hope. Keep expanding your horizon, decolonize your mind, and cross borders.

Yuri Kochiyama

#4. Projects meant living with blacks and Puerto Ricans, but that's what we wanted. Living in the projects, we've met so many wonderful, wonderful people.

Yuri Kochiyama

#5. I tell you, in this country, you don't get much of an education. Throughout high school, through junior college, which is all I went, I didn't know anything about the annihilation of all the Indian nations that were here.

Yuri Kochiyama

#6. Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.

Yuri Kochiyama

#7. When you're in a black group, you have to keep in mind you're not black. You just have to be sensitive. We have to be appreciative that the black nationalist struggle is a nationalist struggle.

Yuri Kochiyama

#8. I don't think there will ever be a time when people will stop wanting to bring about change.

Yuri Kochiyama

#9. The movement is contagious, and the people in it are the ones who pass on the spirit.

Yuri Kochiyama

#10. Wakefulness is not a destination but a song the human heart keeps singing, the way birds keep singing at the first sign of light.

Mark Nepo

#11. Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

Walter Benjamin

#12. Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.

Yuri Kochiyama

#13. Don't become too narrow. Live fully. Meet all kinds of people. You'll learn something from everyone. Follow what you feel in your heart.

Yuri Kochiyama

#14. A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits

Napoleon Bonaparte

#15. The most important thing today is to stop US wars.

Yuri Kochiyama

#16. People have a right to violence, to rebel, to fight back.

Yuri Kochiyama

#17. your camellias are holding up

Fannie Flagg

#18. We are all part of one another.

Yuri Kochiyama

#19. Israel gives the West Bank water twice a week! One way of promoting good would be not to ration water.

Zubin Mehta

#20. More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past

William Shakespeare

#21. 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

#22. Will you have the courage to obey the voice of God?

Craig Groeschel

#23. The United States of America is a nation where people are not united because of those three glaring frailties: racism, injustices and inequities.

Yuri Kochiyama

#24. Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Harry S. Truman

#25. When I behold the heavens as in their prime,
And then the earth (though old) still clad in green,
The stones and trees, insensible of time,
Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen

Anne Bradstreet