#ali

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ↗

— Desmond Tutu

#courage #dissent #moral-courage #neutrality #protest

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ↗

— Robert F. Kennedy

#influence #justice #kindness #make-a-difference #oppression

You cannot have the right to do what is wrong! ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#means-justifying-the-ends #moral-courage #courage

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together. ↗

— Jacques Maritain

#desire #imagination #instinct #intellect #love

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. ↗

— James Baldwin

#individuality #inspirational-quotes #life #life-lessons #courage

As a result of things that may have happened in their past, women seem to find it hard to trust anybody. They are so worried that people will somehow dislike them if they have the courage to be themselves. They are convinced by society’s idea that you have to be thin to be beautiful. But you know what, my sister? You’re beautiful just as you are! ↗

— Corallie Buchanan

#inner-beauty #beauty

Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition. ↗

— Alisa Steinberg

#optimism #realists #courage

Should she stick with the nice, sensitive guy who treats her well (Ben Stiller), or should she roll the dice with the frustrating boho bozo who treats her like crap (Ethan Hawk)? Winona made the kind of romantic decision most people my age would have made in 1994: She pursued a path that was difficult and depressing, and she did so because it showed the slightest potential for transcendence. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#age

What responsibility are you avoiding... He wasn't avoiding responsibility... Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn't change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn't have to care, then he didn't need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn't have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#morality #change

Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women. Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are. ↗

— Byron Hurt

#equality #feminism #hurt #pro-feminist #sexism