Activist Inspirational Quotes

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.

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.

To say nothing is saying something. You must denounce things you are against or one might believe that you support things you really do not.

When people ask me how I got into activism, I often say, “The first person you are ever an activist for is yourself.” If I wasn’t gonna fight for me, who else was?

They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!

You say that you love your children above everything else. And yet you are stealing their future.

The first person you are ever an activist for is yourself.

I could not feel, smell, see, hear, or taste the world around me. If I had allowed myself to experience these things in all their intensity, I might have lost my mind. If I had allowed myself to cry, I might never have been able to stop. So I survived, but I never felt joy, never felt safe.

Don’t be a witness. Be an activist.

The most influential people you will ever meet were once held together by the encouragement of others.

Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people who have no intelligent knowledge of what they condemn?

I have a little different definition of evil than most people. When you have the opportunity and the ability to do good and you do nothing, that's evil. Evil doesn't always have to be an overt act, it can be merely the absence of good.

A big reason for optimism about the end of animal farming is that it doesn't have to be the end of meat.

The real power belongs to the people.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

The vast majority of people eat animal products not because of how they’re produced, but in spite of it.

One of the most useful skills advocates can develop is a sincere satisfaction in changing their mind, putting the goal of effectiveness before the goal of having been correct.

...But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of a few.

Love has turned many into poets; pain has turned many into artists; charity has turned many into pacifists, and anger has turned many into activists.

Disobedience to rigid laws is a revolutionary act.

Music; worship and prayer to God.

I'm all for fighting tyranny and oppression.

Only until all human beings begin to recognize themselves as human beings will prejudice be gone forever. People ask me what race I am, but there is no such thing as race. I just answer: "I’m a member of the human race.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.

If we can’t feel into the heart of grief, we can’t truly move on to experience hope and joy. We can’t be present to what is now, and what is next, because we are bound by the loss and sorrow that holds us to the past. Grief has to flow. It has to be carried, not just by you, but by the others with you, by your community, until it transforms to the next rightful calling of your heart to action.

Hope dreams into being what is possible but not yet formed.

My body, my soul and my mind, simultaneously response to good music.

Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media.

Helen Keller, who lost both her sight and hearing in childhood but became a renowned activist and author, said that there is no such thing as a secure life. “It does not exist in nature … Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Risk, then, is not just part of life. It is life. The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place. It’s the high-anxiety zone, but it’s also where you discover who you are. Karl Wallenda, patriarch of the legendary high-wire-walking family, nailed it when he said: “Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.

One of the plagues of our day is that it's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of massive violence, poverty and injustice around the globe...One of the greatest needs in this country is for us to have some hope, and to feel empowered that as ordinary people we can make a difference.

Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to “put nature above man.” They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists.

Preserve, Conserve, Inspire, Teach. Empowering children to be planet-citizens; to care about the planet, themselves and eachtother! Breath-of-fresh-air books that speak to the heart of children - is what matters to me." —Stephanie Tara, author, mom, activist

We live in a strange world, where we think we can buy or build our way out of a crisis that has been created by buying and building things. Where a football game or a film gala gets more media attention than the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Where celebrities, film and pop stars who have stood up against all injustices will not stand up for our environment and for climate justice because that would inflict on their right to fly around the world visiting their favourite restaurants, beaches and yoga retreats.

Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another. My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians. When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer. Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.

In the end, it is up to us to instruct, inspire, and encourage one another by what we do and how we live. We must all, in this sense, be activists. If we want more connection, we must work harder to connect with others. If we want more unity, we must work to be uniters. If we want more leadership, then we must lead. The most profound changes in our country have come when individuals joined with other individuals in the stubborn belief that they could make change.

Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).

We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do. We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

Think about it: If you have saved just enough to have your own house, your own car, a modicum of income to pay for food, clothes, and a few conveniences, and your everyday responsibilities start and end only with yourself… You can afford not to do anything outside of breathing, eating, and sleeping. Time would be an endless, white blanket. Without folds and pleats or sudden rips. Monday would look like Sunday, going sans adrenaline, slow, so slow and so unnoticed. Flowing, flowing, time is flowing in phrases, in sentences, in talk exchanges of people that come as pictures and videos, appearing, disappearing, in the safe, distant walls of Facebook. Dial fast food for a pizza, pasta, a burger or a salad. Cooking is for those with entire families to feed. The sala is well appointed. A day-maid comes to clean. Quietly, quietly she dusts a glass figurine here, the flat TV there. No words, just a ho-hum and then she leaves as silently as she came. Press the shower knob and water comes as rain. A TV remote conjures news and movies and soaps. And always, always, there’s the internet for uncomplaining company. Outside, little boys and girls trudge along barefoot. Their tinny, whiny voices climb up your windowsill asking for food. You see them. They don’t see you. The same way the vote-hungry politicians, the power-mad rich, the hey-did-you-know people from newsrooms, and the perpetually angry activists don’t see you. Safely ensconced in your tower of concrete, you retreat. Uncaring and old./HOW EASY IT IS NOT TO CARE

Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.

Only a few speak out against injustices. And, it's okay. History shows that it only takes a few to change the world.

Without hope, I wouldn’t even try. Hope lifts me to consider new possibilities so I can stay the course of my desire, no matter what.

We have a duty to care for the environment.

You can reach maximum performance by engaging in physical activities.

Not yet. I don't know what I'm so happy about. But it doesn't matter whether Ma agrees or not. I can make my own decisions. I'm a person, the same as the rest of you.

As with any job, you don't just sit around achieving all day- you have to put in hours. Until that point, whenever I saw someone doing something I wanted to do, I'd devote many of those hours to negative energy. I would try to convince myself that these strangers weren't worthy of the things I wanted instead of being honesty with myself about how they got there.

We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.

In current times when everyone tells us to work smart, they are right. Be idealist, bring grand big ideas, innovate and launch thrilling initiatives but then, work hard. Work real hard because all that has ever been achieved in this world is by true dedication, persistence and consistent hard work".

To be able to open the heart again after betrayal, injury, or loss is a precious act. It requires both courage and compassion. It requires a new movement to emerge from the depths of grief. Forgiveness is one of the most certain paths to restoration, and it is also one of the most difficult. However, it is an attempt to return to wholeness, once again, by letting go and freeing myself from the tight clutch and heavy burden of caution, anger, resentment, and the desire for revenge and punishment. In forgiving others, I free myself towards belonging and wholeness, be it with the person I am forgiving, or with myself.

Her later work on adolescent girls and their “silenced” voices shows us a different Gilligan. Her ideas were successful in the sense that they inspired activists in organizations like the AAUW and the Ms. Foundation to go on red alert in an effort to save the nation’s “drowning and disappearing” daughters. But all their activism was based on a false premise: that girls were subdued, neglected, and diminished. In fact, the opposite was true: girls were moving ahead of boys in most of the ways that count. Gilligan’s powerful myth of the incredible shrinking girl did more harm than good. It patronized girls, portraying them as victims of the culture. It diverted attention from the academic deficits of boys. It also gave urgency and credibility to a specious self-esteem movement that wasted everybody’s time.

You never know what will spark a student's interest and feed the flame of learning. For me, all subjects are connected: writing, reading, science, art, music, math, social studies. By presenting myself as a writer with wide ranging passions - for astronomy, volcanology, art, music, history, and community service - I hope to inspire not only budding writers but also budding scientists, artists, activists...

Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the only reason they have been dispossessed is that enemies have cheated them of power. Such leaders undermine existing power structures, and as they collapse, people previously apathetic about politics turn into activists, not necessarily expecting a better life, but seeing themselves as heroes reclaiming the country. Leaders don’t try to persuade people to support real solutions, but instead reinforce their followers’ fantasy self-image and organize them into a mass movement. Once people internalize their leader’s propaganda, it doesn’t matter when pieces of it are proven to be lies, because it has become central to their identity. As a strongman becomes more and more destructive, followers’ loyalty only increases. Having begun to treat their perceived enemies badly, they need to believe their victims deserve it. Turning against the leader who inspired such behavior would mean admitting they had been wrong and that they, not their enemies, are evil. This, they cannot do.

These new friends had fought for suffrage, they had won, and now they were determined to use the vote to advance women’s interests. They did not define themselves by their achievements as wives. Their zeal, their brains, their integrity, the inspiring vision they brought to politics—all of it was thrilling to Eleanor. The activists she met in the 1920s became her tribe. •   •   • They were also her teachers—indeed, it’s possible to say they invented her.

Early farming villages worldwide were much less authoritarian places than later societies. But the Indians of the eastern seaboard institutionalized their liberty to an unusual extent—the Haudenosaunee especially, but many others, too. (“Their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty,” said colonist James Adair of the Ani Yun Wiya [Cherokee].) Important historically, these were the free people encountered by France and Britain—personifications of democratic self-government so vivid that some historians and activists have argued that the Great Law of Peace directly inspired the U.S. Constitution.

In contexts of colonial oppression, intellectuals, especially those who advocate and work for justice, cannot be just-or mere- intellectuals, in the abstract sense; they cannot but be immersed in some form or another of activism, to learn from fellow activists through real-life experiences, to widen the horizons of their sources of inspiration, and to organically engage in effective, collective emancipatory processes, without the self-indulgence, complacency, or ivory-towerness that might otherwise blur their moral vision. In short, to be just intellectuals, committed to justice as the most ethical and durable foundation of peace.

No matter which telethon it was, though, a sick-looking child would have been trotted out with the express purpose of inspiring your sympathy, or rather, pity. These sick, pitiful images of disabled people contributed to the assumption that most folks had about us – that it was because of medical condition that we weren’t out and about in society. We were seen as helpless and childlike, as the kind of people for whom you felt pity and raised money to cure their disease. Not the kind of people who fought back. It was time to share our side of the story. You can’t just take over a federal building and not tell anyone why you did it.

We live in a world where we have to sacrifice our comfort for the sake of others. Where we have to go an extra mile to meet others' needs. Where we have to dig deep in our resources to please others. I have gone out of my comfort zone for some people. Some people have gone out of their comfort zone for me. And I'm grateful. It's life. It's a common thing. There is no right or wrong to this behaviour. We do it because either we want to or that we must. By the way, our self-sacrificing service can be unhealthy to us. Some people burn themselves down trying to keep others warm. Some break their backs trying to carry the whole world. Some break their bones trying to bend backwards for their loved ones. All these sacrifices are, sometimes, not appreciated. Usually we don't thank the people who go out of their comfort zone to make us feel comfortable. Again, although it's not okay, it's a common thing. It's another side of life. To be fair, we must get in touch with our humanity and show gratitude for these sacrifices. We owe it to so many people. And sometimes we don't even realise it. Thanks be to God for forgiving our sins — which we repeat. Thanks to our world leaders and the activists for the work that they do to make our economic life better. Thanks to our teachers, lecturers, mentors, and role models for shaping our lives. Thanks to our parents for their continual sacrifices. Thanks to our friends for their solid support. Thanks to our children, nephews, and nieces. They allow us to practise discipline and leadership on them. Thanks to the doctors and nurses who save our lives daily. Thanks to safety professionals and legal representatives. They protect us and our possessions. Thanks to our church leaders, spiritual gurus and guides, and meditation partners. They shape our spiritual lives. Thanks to musicians, actors, writers, poets, and sportspeople for their entertainment. Thanks to everyone who contributes in a positive way to our society. Whether recognised or not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

If this past election and our present political, social, and environmental upheavals have done nothing else, they have inspired a new generation of thinkers. From poets to activists to journalists to scholars, the raw and gritty realities we face as a nation and as global citizens are being exposed, dissected, and examined. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and the right to peacefully protest are not the luxuries of a free society, they are the defenders,supporters, and protectors of a free society. They are what make a free society possible. The solutions to our problems will no doubt be lengthy, complex, and difficult, but a generation awakened from the lethal sleep of apathy is a beginning. And that offers true hope for our future.

Protesting problems doesn’t really bring solutions. It just brings more problems. We reap what we sow. If we want to reap happiness, we must sow happiness. And that happiness inspires, strengthens others and builds bridges. If we want solutions, we have to think about solutions and be detached from the problem. Otherwise, [if we focus on the problem] we take the problem with us, [keep it active,] and poison the future. If we want to reap love, we must love. With no ifs and buts. And, we need to do it OURSELVES instead of asking others to do it. This is freedom. This is empowerment. This is our own solution from the problem, from our sorrow, frrom our pain. And the more people detach themselves from the unwanted, and walk the path of love, and [focus on] the joy of the wanted, the more solutions we achieve for the world.

There is a madness about wilderness. The "savage and dreary" wilderness... Are we more enlightened in proclaiming that such places no longer disturb us, or have we lost touch with some fundamental paradox? Wilderness activists frequently insist that their aim is to reeducate the West into an unequivocal appreciation of the beauty of "natural" wilderness. Such a goal is puzzling, for it is unlikely that any human culture has unparadoxically embraced all its known regions of landscape. There is a concerted effort to clean up the imagination of wilderness and to remove any gloom associated with it. In the past this was achieved by literally clearing away the forests, swamps and jungles or by cultivating the deserts. Now it is being fantasized away by insisting that the oppressiveness and fear traditionally inspired by wilderness were biased and wrong.

Look at the telephone; it would remind you of a unique scientist, Alexander Graham Bell. He, besides being a great inventor, was also a man of great compassion and service. In fact, much of the research which led to the development of the telephone was directed at finding solutions to the challenges of hearing impaired people and helping them to be able to listen and communicate. Bell’s mother and wife were both hearing impaired and it profoundly changed Bell’s outlook to science. He aimed to make devices which would help the hearing impaired. He started a special school in Boston to teach hearing impaired people in novel ways. It was these lessons which inspired him to work with sound and led to the invention of the telephone. Can you guess the name of the most famous student of Alexander Graham Bell? It was Helen Keller, the great author, activist and poet who was hearing and visually impaired. About her teacher, she once said that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that ‘inhuman silence which separates and estranges’.

La logothérapie, sans nier le caractère transitoire essentiel de l’existence humaine, n’est pas pessimiste mais plutôt «activiste». En termes figurés, disons que le pessimiste ressemble à la personne qui voit avec tristesse son calendrier s’amincir de jour en jour à mesure qu’il en enlève les feuilles. Par contre, la personne qui aborde avec enthousiasme les problèmes de la vie ressemble à la personne qui range soigneusement les feuilles de son calendrier après avoir griffonné quelques notes à l’endos. Elle peut se pencher avec joie et fierté sur toute la richesse contenue dans ces notes, sur tous les moments d’une vie dont elle a pleinement joui. Que lui importe de vieillir? Pourquoi regretter sa jeunesse et envier les jeunes? Pour les possibilités que leur réserve l’avenir? Non point. Elle est pleinement consciente de la richesse de son passé, qui contient non seulement la réalité du travail accompli et de ses amours vécues, mais aussi de ses souffrances bravement affrontées. C’est encore de ces souffrances qu’elle est le plus fière, même si elles ne peuvent pas inspirer d’envie.

Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively, we might say: the pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes; on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? No thank you, he will think. Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past. Not only the reality of work done, and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.

we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.

Now that Mexicans can retain their nationality, activist groups encourage them to naturalize and become active in Hispanic causes. There was a huge push in 2007 to naturalize in time for the 2008 elections. Newspapers and television joined church groups and Hispanic activists in a campaign called Ya Es Hora. ¡Ciudadanía! (It’s time. Citizenship!). La Opinión, a Los Angeles newspaper, published full-page advertisements explaining how to apply for citizenship, and the Spanish-language network Univision’s KMEX television station in Los Angeles promoted citizenship workshops on the air. A popular radio personality named Eddie Sotelo ran a call-in contest called “Who Wants to be a Citizen?” in which listeners could win prizes by answering questions from the citizenship exam. In 2008, Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, was frank about why she was part of a widespread effort to register Hispanics to vote: She wanted them to “help shape the political landscape.” In California, where 300,000 people—overwhelmingly Hispanic—were naturalized in 2008, whites were expected to be a minority of the electorate in 2026. Joanuen Llamas, who immigrated legally in 1998, naturalized in 2008 after attending the massive 2006 demonstrations in support of illegal aliens. She said she was inspired by one of the pro-amnesty slogans she had heard: “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Hispanics like her are not naturalizing because they love America but because they want to change it.

Activists who expressed genuine and reasonable concern for the struggles of trans-identified people would simultaneously dismiss women’s desire for safety, privacy, dignity and fair competition. Unlike those activists, I feel compassion both for people who feel at odds with their sexed bodies, and for the people, mainly women and children, who are harmed when sexual dimorphism is denied. At first I was puzzled that well-educated young women were the most ardent supporters of this new policy of gender self-identification, even though it is very much against their interests. A man may be embarrassed if a female person uses a male changing room; a male in a communal female facility can inspire fear. I came to see it as the rising generation’s ‘luxury belief’ – a creed espoused by members of an elite to enhance their status in each other’s eyes, with the harms experienced by the less fortunate. If you have social and financial capital, you can buy your way out of problems – if a facility you use jeopardises your safety or privacy, you will simply switch. It is poorer and older women who are stuck with the consequences of self-ID in women’s prisons, shelters and refuges, hospital wards and care homes. And some women’s apparent support for self-ID is deceptive, expressed for fear of what open opposition would bring. The few male academics and journalists who write critically on this topic tell me that they get only a fraction of the hate directed at their female peers (and are spared the sexualised insults and rape threats). This dynamic is reinforced by ageism, which is inextricably intertwined with misogyny – including internalised misogyny. I was astonished by the young female reviewer who described my book’s tone as ‘harsh’ and ‘unfortunate’. I wondered if she knew that sexists often say they would have listened to women if only they had stated their demands more nicely and politely, and whether she realised that once she is no longer young and beautiful, the same sorts of things will be said about her, too.

Finding the right mentor is not always easy. But we can locate role models in a more accessible place: the stories of great originals throughout history. Human rights advocate Malala Yousafzai was moved by reading biographies of Meena, an activist for equality in Afghanistan, and of Martin Luther King, Jr. King was inspired by Gandhi as was Nelson Mandela. In some cases, fictional characters can be even better role models. Growing up, many originals find their first heroes in their most beloved novels where protagonists exercise their creativity in pursuit of unique accomplishments. When asked to name their favorite books, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel each chose “Lord of the Rings“, the epic tale of a hobbit’s adventures to destroy a dangerous ring of power. Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Bezos both pointed to “A Wrinkle in Time“ in which a young girl learns to bend the laws of physics and travels through time. Mark Zuckerberg was partial to “Enders Game“ where it’s up to a group of kids to save the planet from an alien attack. Jack Ma named his favorite childhood book as “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves“, about a woodcutter who takes the initiative to change his own fate. … There are studies showing that when children’s stories emphasize original achievements, the next generation innovates more.… Unlike biographies, in fictional stories characters can perform actions that have never been accomplished before, making the impossible seem possible. The inventors of the modern submarine and helicopters were transfixed by Jules Vern’s visions in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Clippership of the Clouds”. One of the earliest rockets was built by a scientist who drew his motivation from an H.G. Wells novel. Some of the earliest mobile phones, tablets, GPS navigators, portable digital storage desks, and multimedia players were designed by people who watched “Star Trek” characters using similar devices. As we encounter these images of originality in history and fiction, the logic of consequence fades away we no longer worry as much about what will happen if we fail… Instead of causing us to rebel because traditional avenues are closed, the protagonist in our favorite stories may inspire originality by opening our minds to unconventional paths.

Continetti concludes: "An intellectual, financial, technological, and social infrastructure to undermine global capitalism has been developing for more than two decades, and we are in the middle of its latest manifestation… The occupiers’ tent cities are self-governing, communal, egalitarian, and networked. They reject everyday politics. They foster bohemianism and confrontation with the civil authorities. They are the Phalanx and New Harmony, updated for postmodern times and plopped in the middle of our cities. There may not be that many activists in the camps. They may appear silly, even grotesque. They may resist "agendas" and "policies." They may not agree on what they want or when they want it. And they may disappear as winter arrives and the liberals whose parks they are occupying lose patience with them. But the utopians and anarchists will reappear… The occupation will persist as long as individuals believe that inequalities of property are unjust and that the brotherhood of man can be established on earth." You can see why anarchists might find this sort of thing refreshingly honest. The author makes no secret of his desire to see us all in prison, but at least he’s willing to make an honest assessment of what the stakes are. Still, there is one screamingly dishonest theme that runs throughout the Weekly Standard piece: the intentional conflation of "democracy" with "everyday politics," that is, lobbying, fund-raising, working for electoral campaigns, and otherwise participating in the current American political system. The premise is that the author stands in favor of democracy, and that occupiers, in rejecting the existing system, are against it. In fact, the conservative tradition that produced and sustains journals like The Weekly Stand is profoundly antidemocratic. Its heroes, from Plato to Edmund Burke, are, almost uniformly, men who opposed democracy on principle, and its readers are still fond of statements like "America is not a democracy, it’s a republic." What’s more, the sort of arguments Continetti breaks out here--that anarchist-inspire movements are unstable, confused, threaten established orders of property, and must necessarily lead to violence--are precisely the arguments that have, for centuries. been leveled by conservatives against democracy itself. In reality, OWS is anarchist-inspired, but for precisely that reason it stands squarely in the very tradition of American popular democracy that conservatives like Continetti have always staunchly opposed. Anarchism does not mean the negation of democracy--or at least, any of the aspects of democracy that most American have historically liked. Rather, anarchism is a matter of taking those core democratic principles to their logical conclusions. The reason it’s difficult to see this is because the word "democracy" has had such an endlessly contested history: so much so that most American pundits and politicians, for instance, now use the term to refer to a form of government established with the explicit purpose of ensuring what John Adams once called "the horrors of democracy" would never come about. (p. 153-154)

Like the shore changing with the swing of the tides, I seem to be uncovering long-hidden propensities, dormant aspects of myself newly exposed by the pull of the moon. For here I am when the tide goes out - speeder slowing down, fighter finding harmony, activist turned contemplative, analyzer seeking synthesis, communard become solitaire, rationalist grown spiritual, teacher turned student, desired dissolving in contentment.

In the same era, Jamal al-Din Afghani (1838–97), a scholar and activist from Iran, embarked on an ambitious mission to “awake” Muslims from obscurantism and encourage them to embrace Western science and rationalism, which he considered already inherent in the Qur’an. Egyptian scholar Muhammed Abduh, a professor at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, embraced al-Afghani’s views and developed a reformist Islamic view that clearly was inspired by the Mutazilites of the earliest centuries of Islam. Abduh criticized some of the established Hadiths, including the ones that promote misogyny, and argued for the emancipation of Muslim women.92

If Tivo marks the beginning of the shift from the Brand Age to the Product Age, the summer of 2020 saw the Brand Age’s end. The killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests briefly displaced the pandemic in the front and center of our national consciousness, making obvious the passing of the Brand Age into history. Seemingly every brand company did what they always do when America’s sins are pulled out from the back of the closet where we try to keep them hidden: they called up their agencies and posted inspiring words, arresting images, and black rectangles. Message: We care. Only this time, it didn’t resonate. Their brand magic fizzled. First on social media, then tumbling from there onto newspapers and evening news, activists and customers started using the tools of the new age to compare these companies’ carefully crafted brand messages with the reality of their operations. “This you?” became the Twitter meme that exposed the brand wizards. Companies who posted about their “support” for black empowerment were called out when their own websites revealed the music did not match the words. The NFL claimed it celebrates protest, and the internet tweeted back, “This you?” under a picture of Colin Kaepernick kneeling. L’Oréal posted that “speaking out is worth it” and got clapped back with stories about dropping a model just three years earlier for speaking out against racism. The performative wokeness across brands felt forced and hollow. Systemic racism is a serious issue, and a 30-second spot during The Masked Singer doesn’t prove you are serious about systemic racism. That’s always been true, about ads on any issue, but social media and the ease of access to data on the internet has made it much harder for companies to pretend.

The idea for the Green New Deal began with a group called the Sunrise Movement, started by recent college graduate environmental activists who drew inspiration from Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Some even say their roots can be traced back to Saul Alinsky, the gift to the right who keeps on giving. Alinsky, as you might remember, wrote a book back in 1971 called Rules for Radicals in which he cited Lucifer as the father of the radical movement. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both idolized Alinsky.

You are the eyeway to illumination, You are the spineway to invigoration. You are the headway to inspiration, You are the heartway to assimilation.

I am the world I want to build, I am the human I want to inspire. I am the mind I want as neighbor, I am just a glimpse into the future.

The government replaced the real story of what had happened with lavish propaganda about how the military had fended off bloodthirsty communist hordes. The National Library removed references to the events from its records. Newspaper accounts were destroyed. Government files from the time were hidden or burned. What remained, the American historian Thomas Anderson wrote in 1971, was a “paranoiac fear of communism that has gripped the nation ever since. This fear is expressed in the continual labeling of even the most modest reform movements as communist or communist inspired.” Roque Dalton, the Salvadoran poet and activist, put it more succinctly: “We were all born half dead in 1932.

The goal of Queer Theory is to use political activism to make people conscious of the “prison” society locks us all into, thereby making people conscious of the prison they have constructed for themselves. This queer consciousness is the state of being awake to the “truth” of Queer Theory. In developing a queer consciousness, one becomes a radical activist who uses Queer Theory as the lens through which they view all of society. Queer Theory informs how those with queer consciousness think and act in the world. Queer consciousness inspires one to view society as a prison they must dismantle and break free from to free their soul. In short, Queer Theory is a vehicle for a complete and perpetual cultural and personal revolution.

In activist communities, our relationship to anger is immature, ill informed, and overly romanticized. We manipulate anger as a false source of energy and inspiration. Many of us have no idea how to really use anger to see the changes we need to see in our communities. Our relationship to anger is a reactive and compulsory one. We feel the anger and respond.

Mexico is a beacon of hope for the whole world as its leaders, activists, and philosophers call for a new humanist reality.

A love of diverse life as old as our origins was always there to call on, and when we have done so we’ve bathed human history in a brighter light. This complex American story produced many inspiring, empathetic heroes, from Native peoples who preserved a wild continent largely intact for ten thousand years to naturalists compelled to know every detail of continental animal life, from visionaries who gave the world its first national parks to writers, activists, and politicians who confronted the destruction and loss of wild animals before it was too late.

You can take a little bit of the East and a little bit of the West, and create a formulaic soup in life that works best for you: no one else has to drink it if they don’t like

You don't have to be a PhD to be an activist," she said as we talked one evening, after I'd shared my worries about not having been able to move forward with my education as quickly as I wanted to. Katrarine didn't discourage me from pursuing my school goals, but she also told me I didn't need to wait for a piece of paper to give me permission to try to make a difference in the world." I don't even know where to start with this one. I guess I'll with the simplest. Anyone can make a difference in the world.

Obama spoke of being inspired by the courage of Black civil rights activists and freedom riders, who faced dog attacks, fire hoses, and police brutality, and “who risked everything to advance democracy.” Yet under his watch, private security working on behalf of DAPL unleashed attack dogs on unarmed Water Protectors who were attempting to stop bulldozers form destroying a burial ground; Morton County sheriff’s deputies sprayed Water Protectors with water cannons in freezing temperatures, injuring hundreds; and police officers and private security guards brutalized hundreds of unarmed protestors. All of this violence was part of an effort to put a pipeline through Indigenous lands.

Handcrafted Humanity Sonnet 12 Here are some words born of narrowness, Activist, woke, religious, atheist, Socialist, communist, capitalist, conservative, Intellectual, intelligent, classy, elitist, Educated, learned, well-versed, sound-mind, Traditional, old-fashioned, spiritual, altruistic, Empiricist, Existentialist, rationalist, freethinker, Godly, compassionate, selfless and mystic. I refuse to be defined by any of them, None of them can explain my true sentiment. I may advocate for the good within each of them, But I refuse to give any of them exclusive endorsement. All these words are too puny to define my identity. My name is human, my heart contains entire humanity.

In order to reach your full potential, you must first believe you have potential. You have unique skills, interests, perspectives, ideas and ways of showing up in the world that make you different than anyone else in the universe. The pain and suffering you feel now will one day be a blurry memory, and your challenges and darkest moments are what make you an inspiration to others. The things that make you different than your peers are the very things that make you important and valuable. Every great leader, activist and change-maker started as a child who chose to take action to change the world. Remind yourself over and over again that have the power to choose; You have the power to choose to embody the best version of yourself; You have the power to choose to make life better for the people and world around you; You have the power to choose the legacy you leave behind. Whoever you want to be and however you want to be remembered, choose that. Never forget you matter, and you choose your life story.

In order for kids to reach their full potential, they must first believe they have potential. They must believe that they matter and that they have the power to choose a beautiful life story. They must feel empowered to discover and use their unique skills, interests, ideas, perspectives and ways of showing up in the world to embody the best possible version of themself and create the best possible life for themself. They must be taught that every great leader, activist and change-maker started as a kid who chose to take action to change the world. It is imperative that teachers, parents, role models and mentors tell and show kids over and over again that they are valuable and important, that they matter, and that have the power to choose. They have the power to choose to embody the best version of themself. They have the power to choose to make life better for the people and world around them. They have the power to choose the legacy they leave behind. Whoever they want to be and however they want to be remembered, they have the power to choose that.

There are horrible events going on all over the world. Human beings are really fucking up. Poets, we can’t just write poems. We have to put poems into action.

How would You have me see this day, be this day, and do this day?

When I feel perplexed by the sorrows throughout the world and how Earth is suffering because of our greed, hatred and ignorance, I pray not so much to fix the problems but to wake up the minds of those who are ignorant of how they contribute to the suffering in the world. I ask that I, too, wake up to my own ignorance.

Every morning I say, “Thank YOU,” and I call a meeting with my committee of Angels. I assign them jobs: Dear Angel … Look after the young single mother in labor. Angel of strength … PLEASE comfort the young father who just found out he is HIV positive. Angels … One of you go to his wife, and make sure she does not get infected. Safety Angel … Please make sure my son wears his helmet on the motorbike. Angel of money … Make sure we can pay the bills for the clinic. Hand-washing Angels, Tooth-brushing Angels, Street-crossing Angels … Look after my grandchildren. Milk Angels … Help the mothers to breastfeed their babies. Angels of Midwives … Look after the birth-keepers. Angels of Peace … Please don’t give up!

I discovered that there is a huge difference between memorizing and learning by heart.

I have a lot of liturgical texts that some people would see as obligations. And I see them as opportunities.

People say to me sometimes, “How come my prayer isn’t being answered?” and I tell them, “You hang up the phone too soon.

Sometimes my prayers are imagined inwardly, and offered silently. Sometimes they are ritualized in creativity, by writing a poem, singing a song or making a drawing. Sometimes they are murmured under my breath, and sometimes they are cawed in a dialogue with the crows that live nearby, in a language that sounds to me like theirs.

Oh Lord, remove from me this veil of evil tendencies. I am not powerful, but I am connected to You who are almighty. Your light enters me and I receive your wisdom. Any wrath, greed, envy and attachments disappear in the light of your wisdom. On the very day that your sight falls upon me, my lower nature and my human limitations shall be transformed into divine nature. My transformation is in your hands alone. Have compassion for me, come to me wherever I may be and reach through this veil.

Any poem you love can be a sanctuary. Literally. A poem can build a sacred space within you because it changes the physiological reality within your body. The sounds and silences of a poem affect your breathing, your pulse, even your brain waves and cerebrospinal fluid. And when you speak the poem aloud, the sound vibrates the crystals in your bones and fascia the way your voice vibrates in the nave of a cathedral, creating a special resonance that invites revelation.

Passion is the fire that can burn through fear.

Don't be afraid that things are changing, because indeed they always are.

When I act, I act on behalf of who or what I love. Even when I have to fight against something, it is because of what I value and love.