That it is a bad thing to be tortured and starved, humiliated or hurt, is not an opinion; it is a fact. That it is better for people to be loved and attended to, rather than hated or neglected, is again a plain fact, not a matter of opinion.

- G. J. Warnock

It isn't until you begin to fight in your own cause that you (a) become really committed to winning, and (b) become a genuine ally of other people struggling for their freedom.

- Robin Morgan

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

- Ralph Ellison

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

- Louis D. Brandeis

Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.

- Robin Morgan

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.

- Aristotle

The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

- William Blum

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

- Aldous Huxley

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

- Elie Wiesel

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.

- A. Philip Randolph

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

- A. Philip Randolph

I believe in the necessity for struggle by people at the bottom of any society.

- Frances Fox Piven

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

- Louis D. Brandeis

Injustice never rules forever.

- Seneca

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

- Buddha



Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.

- Heinrich Heine



A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.

- Jesse Jackson



It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

- Eleanor Roosevelt



I think that the question of how power can be exerted from the lower reaches has never been more important. It will ultimately determine whether another world is indeed possible

- Frances Fox Piven



Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

- Lillian Hellman



He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

- Rabbi Tarfon



Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom.

- Robert S. McElvaine



A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

- Margaret Atwood



An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.

- Abraham Lincoln



To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

- Louis D. Brandeis



The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him.

- Mark Twain



Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.

(sometimes paraphrased as "We have enough resources to provide for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.")

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Many groups that have the power to make life decisions for others don't ever have to live out the consequences.

- Frances Fox Piven



An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

- Paulo Freire



When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy.

- John Kerry



He who allows oppression shares the crime.

- Desiderius Erasmus



The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

- Theodor Adorno



The twentieth century may tell us that we have nothing to be complacent about in the recent history of humankind; but it also tells us that there is nothing inevitable about tyranny.

- Rowan D. Williams



Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Each time a person 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, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

- Robert F. Kennedy



As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

- John Stuart Mill



Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

- Reinhold Niebuhr



I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

- Bishop Desmond Tutu



In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

- A. Philip Randolph



Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

- Joseph Heller