Political Activism Quotes

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
― Audre Lorde

“It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“Go to the poor, be the poor. Go to the people, be the people.”
― Russian nihilist proverb

“They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“As an instrument of empowerment oil has been spectacularly effective in removing the levers of power from the reach of the populace. "No matter how many people take to the streets in massive marches," writes Roy Scranton, "they cannot put their hands on the real flow of power because they do not help to produce it. They only consume." Under these circumstances, a march or a demonstration of popular feeling amounts to "little more than an orgy of democratic emotion, an activist-themed street fair, a real-world analogue to Twitter hashtag campaigns: something that gives you a nice feeling, says you belong in a certain group, and is completely divorced from actual legislation and governance." In other words, the public sphere, where politics is performed, has been largely emptied of content in terms of the exercise of power: as with fiction, it has become a forum for secular testimony, a baring-of-the-soul in the world-as-church. Politics as thus practices is primarily an exercise in personal expressiveness.”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

“Phillip. the Dream Defenders founder, had a similar insight. For him, the experience of the Blackout had been a lesson in the varieties of power. Borrowing a concept from Joseph Nye, the political scientist, he now came to understand social media as a form of 'soft power,' a force that shapes culture through argument and story. But there was also 'hard power,' which Nye, in assessing the capacity of different nation-states, characterized as military and economic might. For movements, hard power was the ability to lobby for legislation, elect sympathetic political leaders, get resources allocated toward your cause. Social media, Phillip now saw more clearly, was good at building soft power. But when it came to hard power, it could do very little. And if for Nye every successful state needed a mix of the two, this was doubly true of social movements, which didn't stare with a store of either.

The only way to built hard power was on the ground. As Rachel put it, 'You just can't shortcut organizing.' It made them want to stop the performance, the race for followers, even the reflex to always make their actions public-they would think carefully about if and when to use tactics like occupations and sit-ins.”
― Gal Beckerman, The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas

“The seven core members also became more involved in local Minneapolis politics. Drawing attention at a national level had been the driving impetus of the earlier Black Lives Matter protests, which had relied on getting that hashtag to spike. Now it was clear that if their focal point was police funding, it would need to be a local effort, dependent on a partnership with the city council and the mayor's office, where these budgetary decisions were made. They would need to learn the mechanics and make some allies.

This was organizing as it had long been done, and they got good at it. It was also, in a way, what separated Minneapolis from Cairo. Whereas the Middle East lacked a democratic or grassroots political tradition-and had no way to even imagining how to create one-this wasn't the case in America....But there was a long history of African American organizing that predated Silicon Galley. Miski and their friends got to know city council members and their aides, inundated them with research material, visited their offices, and maybe most important, brought people out to hearings when the budget was being discussed, arguing in forum after forum against the belief that all the police needed were a few more bodycams. All this happened without much fanfare and largely off-line.”
― Gal Beckerman, The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas

“If you’re someone fighting for fair and just outcomes (however you define that), if you fight in a way that amplifies political animosity, you may end up helping create a world that is less fair and less just. This is why it’s important to pursue one’s political aims in depolarizing, de-escalating, and persuasive ways. And this is entirely possible: You can work toward any political goal while avoiding dehumanizing and insulting your political opponents, and while speaking in persuasive, respectful ways.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization