We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. — Mother Teresa

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Read everything. Learn as much as you can learn. Study. Be kind. Be bold. Be courageous. — John Robert Lewis

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it. — John Robert Lewis

You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe. You have to have courage, raw courage. — John Robert Lewis

Be the change that you wish to see in the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear. — Mahatma Gandhi

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. — Mahatma Gandhi

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.

May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership... Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Let's build bridges, not walls. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The time is always right to do what is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car. — Garrison Keillor

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. — Winston S. Churchill

Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others. — Coretta Scott King

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. — George Orwell

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am. — Michelle Obama

Donald Trump is a threat to who we are as a people. — Elizabeth Warren

It's so easy to focus on what could go wrong, on what else you could do before you try the thing you really want to do. No. Just get out there and try. — Elizabeth Warren

I'm willing to throw my body in front of the bus to stop bad ideas. — Elizabeth Warren

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. — Robert Kennedy

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right. — Rosa Parks

I believe there is only one race - the human race. — Rosa Parks

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. — H. L. Mencken

If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours. — Noam Chomsky

The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know. — Noam Chomsky

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. — Noam Chomsky

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time. — Noam Chomsky

That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital. — Noam Chomsky

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. — Noam Chomsky

It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism. — Noam Chomsky

Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party. — Noam Chomsky

The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. — Noam Chomsky

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. — Nelson Mandela

It always seems impossible until it's done. — Nelson Mandela

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. — Nelson Mandela

People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. — Nelson Mandela

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. — Sarah Kendzior

It could always be worse, they say. They don't like to say that it could always be better, because that would require redress. — Sarah Kendzior

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say 'stop complaining' always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak. — Sarah Kendzior

When you listen to someone complaining, you are forced to acknowledge them as a human being instead of a category. You are forced to witness how social systems are borne out in personal experience, to recognize that hardship hurts, that solutions are not as simple as they seem. You are forced to trust, and you are forced to care. In complaint lies a path to compassion. — Sarah Kendzior

My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind. — Sarah Kendzior

'a false meritocracy breeds mediocrity'. These days we're seeing the serious geopolitical consequences of this -- of the untalented spoiled children of the rich dominating politics and political media. Bad for truth and democracy. — Sarah Kendzior

In the American media, white people debate whether race matters, rich people debate whether poverty matters, and men debate whether gender matters. People for whom these problems must matter -- for they structure the limitations of their lives -- are locked out of the discussion. — Sarah Kendzior

Poverty is a sentence for the crime of existing. Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw. — Sarah Kendzior

Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty. — Sarah Kendzior

It is easy, when people feel frightened and abandoned, for a demagogue to exploit those feelings of despair for political gain. It is easy for that demagogue to translate fear into fanaticism, to shift extremism into the mainstream and market it under the guise of populism. By the time buyer's remorse hits, a new and more brutal political culture has arisen. A gaslit nation becomes engulfed in flames. — Sarah Kendzior

Female intellectuals gain prominence through tales of their exclusion. They are known for being forgotten. — Sarah Kendzior

Americans should not fear riots. They should fear apathy. They should fear acquiescence. They should not fear each other. But it is understandable, now, that they do. — Sarah Kendzior

Dependence may be the primary trait of the millennial generation, but it is a structural dependence, caused not by 'laziness' or 'narcissism' but by a lack of options or social mobility. — Sarah Kendzior

You are not your job. But you are how you treat people. So what can you do? You can work your hardest and do your best. You can organize and push for collective change. You can hustle and scrounge and play the odds. But when you fall, know that millions are falling with you. Know that it is, to a large extent, out of your hands. And when you see someone else falling, reach out your hands to catch them. — Sarah Kendzior

Ability is discounted without credentials, but the ability to purchase credentials rests, more often than not, on family wealth. — Sarah Kendzior

Paranoia is aggression masked as defense. It was paranoia (and hubris, and greed) that caused the run-up to the Iraq War; it is paranoia that leads to thousands of innocent Muslims being profiled in New York; it is paranoia that led to Trayvon Martin being shot to death on the street. In Congress, paranoia is less a style than a sickness, employed less with flourish than with fear. Paranoia is the refusal to recognize others except as filtered through ourselves—and how do Americans see themselves? Afraid, afraid, afraid. — Sarah Kendzior

We have a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. This is not a secret. We have seen the indictments, we've seen the panicked protectiveness of the GOP even when confronted with Trump's most severe infractions. — Sarah Kendzior

A great way to get out of trouble is if you're the President of the United States and you can pack the courts, you can purge agencies, you can rewrite the law so that you can be immune from prosecution as well as filling your own autocratic objectives and partnering with autocrats around the world, which is what he's done. This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. — Sarah Kendzior

The story of Trump's rise to power is the story of a buried US history -- buried because powerful people liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt. — Sarah Kendzior

Our media is largely sponsored by dictators or dictated by sponsors. It is critical that officials present evidence to the public directly. — Sarah Kendzior

The idea that we need to conform and be in lockstep is so misguided. That's not the same thing as unity. You can have diversity in focus and approach and create a broader unity -- a solidarity. Strive for that, not for conformity. — Sarah Kendzior

What's interesting is that this right-wing criminal cabal that aligned in the 1980s did so at the moment that climate change was getting worse. And their response to the climate crisis was to exploit it, to accelerate it, to root for it. — Sarah Kendzior

The GOP today was born from Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire. Brexit was also born from this empire. It's no wonder that US and UK conservatives are aligned with Putin's empire too -- they all share the same values. — Sarah Kendzior

I'm fine with her tearing up the speech. He's a criminal aspiring autocrat; he should be openly condemned. But a more meaningful route would have been to not invite him to give a SOTU in the first place, not narrow the scope of impeachment, not pass his horrible budgets, etc... — Sarah Kendzior

It could always be worse, they say. They don't like to say that it could always be better, because that would require redress. — Sarah Kendzior

The Trump regime tries to cover up crime with scandal. They try to cover up malice with incompetence. They want to project an image of being inept, instead of as having a cruel and well-defined plan. They have ambition; their ambition is evil. They want us to think they don't know what they're doing. I think they know *exactly* what they're doing. — Sarah Kendzior

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. — Desmond Tutu

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. — Susan B. Anthony

Nothing happens in the `real' world unless it first happens in the images in our heads. — Gloria E. Anzaldua

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Fredrick Douglass

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it if oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. — Arundhati Roy

I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change . . . I'm changing the things I cannot accept. — Angela Davis

Rather, it is the way capitalism operates—the way the system must operate—that makes it so destructive. Economic exploitation and inequality in the service of profit, imperial competition, racism, sexism, and warfare for geopolitical advantage and access to resources are integral parts of capitalism. — Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams

A system to replace capitalism, one based on economic and political equality and ecologically sound economies is both possible and essential. — Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams

If we no longer spend trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons, the military and the arms trade, and on marketing, packaging, advertising, replication of production, overproduction, and built-in waste of all kinds, that money—and huge reservoirs of human knowledge and labor power—would become available to meet the needs of society and the planet. — Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams

To those who say we are too late, we ask: Too late for what? To struggle for a better world means taking the world as it is and working to transform it. Although the ecological and political conditions and trends are in many respects quite desperate, we are not condemned to continue degrading the environment or our social conditions. — Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams

An ecological society will allow us to do all the things that are currently off the table, that capitalism has repeatedly shown itself unable to achieve: providing all people with the ability to develop their full potential. — Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams

A virus isn’t just a biological phenomenon, but a social one. The vulnerabilities it exploits to propagate itself aren’t just the properties of human cells, but how human societies are organized. Societies that organize themselves around the accumulation of capital—that is to say, capitalist ones—place themselves at risk, especially societies like the US, where accumulation takes a particularly brutal form. — Ben Tarmoff

Letting workers get sick and die is acceptable; letting workers get sick and threaten the accumulation process is not. — Ben Tarmoff

REMEMBER THIS IN THE DARKEST MOMENTS, WHEN THE WORK DOESN’T SEEM WORTH IT, AND CHANGE SEEMS JUST OUT OF REACH: OUT OF OUR WILLINGNESS TO PUSH THROUGH COMES A TREMENDOUS POWER… USE IT. — Stacey Abrams

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

Some people say the problem with Christianity is that it's not taught in schools, I say the problem with Christianity is it's not taught in churches.” — Derenic Byrd