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b6ea1e5
|
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
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|
social-justice
religion
humor
prayers
ridicule
satire
social-life
|
Voltaire |
|
b78150b
|
For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.
|
|
social-justice
inspirational
|
N.K. Jemisin |
|
b5b993e
|
Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.
|
|
social-justice
civil-disobedience
non-violence
anti-war
|
Arundhati Roy |
|
50d2c89
|
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
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|
social-justice
|
Martin Luther King Jr. |
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1f7aad5
|
"It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."
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|
violence
silence
social-justice
change
indifference
good-people
vitriol
social-movements
repentance
generations
|
Martin Luther King Jr. |
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3e16370
|
Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.
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|
social-justice
volunteers
inspiration
inspirational-attitude
inspirational-life
inspiring
inspirational
community-service
volunteer
volunteering
volunteerism
community
|
H. Jackson Brown Jr. |
|
cbc093d
|
Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone's different needs.
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|
socialism
equality
social-justice
marxism
|
Terry Eagleton |
|
bf610c8
|
"Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.
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|
social-justice
|
John Green |
|
6c84f9b
|
"Every condition exists," Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, "simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum." Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate."
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|
poverty
social-justice
|
Matthew Desmond |
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50e6dc7
|
The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good). Rather, his teachings and behavior reflect an alternative social vision. Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system. He was a critic of the domination system itself.
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|
social-justice
politics
systems
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
f0b4225
|
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
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social-justice
|
Charles Dickens |
|
368ea92
|
"To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness"." --
|
|
unity
social-justice
individuality
critical-reflection
jazz-freedom-fighter
improve
jazz
|
Cornel West |
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2dcded4
|
But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!
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|
racism
human-rights
social-justice
slavery
|
Harriet Beecher Stowe |
|
66b7b24
|
A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen . The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options - neutrois, two spirit, bigender...any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.
|
|
social-justice
social-media
university
|
Ian McEwan |
|
b534708
|
It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice... there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others--especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!
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|
social-justice
joy
humanity
inspiration
empowerment
antiracism
black-prophetic-fire
economic-disparity
impoverishment
political-motivation
political-movements
poor-people
social-movements
social-injustice
servant-leadership
democracy
|
Cornel West |
|
9018931
|
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors' tactics, the oppressors' relationships.
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|
social-justice
revolution
oppression
|
Audre Lorde |
|
72b9cd7
|
I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?
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|
social-justice
resignation
|
James Baldwin |
|
d3d334d
|
Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names.
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|
racism
social-justice
social-activism
foreign-policy
american-history
patriotism
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
8bfac18
|
It is difficult for men to measure the enormous extent of social discrimination that seems insignificant form the outside and whose moral and intellectual repercussions are so deep in woman that they appear to spring from an original nature. The man most sympathetic to women never knows her concrete situation fully.
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|
feminism
social-justice
women
misogyny
sexism
|
Simone de Beauvoir |
|
d31ce0e
|
The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure.
|
|
social-justice
identity
neocolonialism
representation
race
power
|
Bell Hooks |
|
6852b46
|
And when they spy on us let them discover us loving
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|
social-justice
love
surveillance-state
surveillance-society
surveillance
|
Alice Walker |
|
3ac3442
|
As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a to crumbs from the rich man's table.
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|
social-justice
french-history
capitalism
revolution
|
Eric Hobsbawm |
|
ffe5e70
|
The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security--national, individual, spiritual--wasn't a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else's lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner. But it wasn't about price and heritage, it wasn't about that at all. The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it.
|
|
social-justice
rich-and-poor
consumption
inequality
colonialism
psychology
tourism
|
Richard Flanagan |
|
907aa5f
|
...it is the most militant, most radical intervention anyone can make to not only speak of love, but to engage in the practice of love. For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy. Anytime we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination.
|
|
social-justice
self-determination
love
|
bell hooks |
|
c375ac2
|
You speak as though they cannot be trusted with freedom to build a future for themselves, given the opportunity. Certainly humanity as a whole shares a collective guilt for incompetency in crafting a decent future for ourselves - more often than not, we seem eager to destroy others for our own selfish gain. If you truly care for their prospects once freed, then raise a voice and a hand towards that cause! But do not condemn those who work towards the step that must be accomplished first. Liberty first must be achieved, before anything else can have any meaning. - Jo March to Kate Vaughn, on the abolition of slavery
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|
social-justice
slavery
freedom
liberty
|
Trix Wilkins |
|
6d48cc2
|
However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours? 'If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!' shouts the child.
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|
social-justice
|
Audre Lorde |
|
1b0aa9a
|
Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position.
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|
sisterhood
social-justice
inspirational
position
differences
survival
|
Audre Lorde |
|
d0bd2f5
|
My business is anything that comes between men and the Spirit of God.
|
|
social-justice
social-gospel
|
Richard Llewellyn |
|
e241924
|
Throughout his life Hayek wanted to affirm his identity with the classic liberal tradition, believing that the true cause of the crises leading to two world wars was the steady increase increase in the power of the state, and its misuse in the pursuit of unattainable goals. 'Social justice' was the name of one of these goals, and Hayek expressly dismissed the expression as a piece of deceptive Newspeak, used to advance large-scale injustice in the name of its opposite.
|
|
social-justice
social-justice-warriors
|
Roger Scruton |
|
cc81bcf
|
The gospel Jesus spreads in the book of Luke has as one of its main themes that Jesus brings a social revolution, in which the previous systems and hierarchies of clean and unclean, sinner and saved, and up and down don't mean what they used to. God is doing a new work through Jesus, calling all people to human solidarity. Everybody is a brother, a sister. Equals, children of the God who shows no favouritism. To reject this new social order was to reject Jesus, the very movement of God in flesh and blood.
|
|
social-justice
lazarus
|
Rob Bell |
|
0114668
|
"That some leader dangerous to the basic institutions of American society would arise, Lincoln thought inevitable. Safeguarding these institutions would require a public sufficiently united, sufficiently attached to freedom, and sufficiently wise, "to successfully frustrate his designs." Today it would also require a public sufficiently resistant to incessant criticisms and condemnations of their society for failing to achieve cosmic justice. Moreover, if the dangers in our own times were limited to those of "towering genius," there would be much less danger than there is. However, all that is needed are towering presumptions, which are increasingly mass-produced in our schools and colleges by the educational vogue of encouraging immature and inexperienced students to sit in emotional judgment on the complex evolution of whole ages and vast civilizations."
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|
social-justice
|
Thomas Sowell |
|
dab9abc
|
In American popular usage today, 'liberalism' means left-liberalism - not to be confused with 'neoliberalism' ... and is expressly contrasted with 'conservatism'. In this usage a liberal is one who leans consciously towards the underprivileged, supports the interests of minorities and socially excluded groups, believes in the use of state power to achieve social justice, and in all probability shares the egalitarian and secular values of the nineteenth century socialists.
|
|
social-justice
left-liberalism
liberal
liberalism
|
Roger Scruton |
|
b60b35d
|
Maggie knew Betsy was a female crusader, but also knew that many times crusaders like her were only interested in their own personal equality.
|
|
social-justice
suffragette
race-relations
|
Beverly Jenkins |