Quotes about Activism
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. -- Edmund Burke
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history. -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
This country belongs to the people and whenever they shall grow weary of their government they can exercise their constitutional right to amend it, or revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it. -- Abraham Lincoln
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. -- Henry David Thoreau
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. -- Frederick Douglass
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. -- T.S. Eliot
All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The hottest seats in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crises, choose to do nothing. -- Dante Alighieri
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. -- Thomas Carlyle
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -- Elie Wiesel
The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Men are failures not because they are stupid but because they are not sufficiently impassioned -- Struthers Burt
You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse, you must still act. -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -- Thomas Huxley
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any reason but because they are not already common. -- John Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690)
In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it cost nothing to be a patriot. -- Mark Twain
I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error. -- President James A. Garfield
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States Supreme Court (1928)
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russell
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has! -- Margaret Meade
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. -- Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1787, letter to William Stephens Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy
Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success and more dangerous to carry through, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has against him those who benefited from the old system; while those who should benefit from the new are only lukewarm friends, being suspicious, as men generally are, of something new and not yet experienced. In speaking of innovations, it is first necessary to establish whether the innovators depend upon the strength of others or their own...in the first case, things always go badly for them, in the second, they almost always succeed. From this comes the fact that all armed prophets were victorious and the unarmed came to ruin. -- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 7
We are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. -- Dwight David Eisenhower
Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul. -- Thomas Paine.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. -- Abraham Lincoln
It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. -- United States Supreme Court in American Communications Association v. Douds
Attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. -- Karl Popper
The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. -- George Washington.
If one does not carefully trace the problems back to their roots in a previous intervention, it is very easy to believe that yet another intervention is just the ticket for rectifying them. -- Gene Callahan
The chief cause of problems is solutions. -- Eric Sevareid
Those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. - J.K. Rowling
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. - Robert F. Kennedy
One determined person can make a significant difference; a small group of determined people can change the course of history. - Sonia Johnson
My country is the world. My religion is to do good. -- Thomas Paine
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