Social Justice Quotes - Page 17

• It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Sorrow

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, World

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli (1995). “Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints”, p.149, Cambridge University Press

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• The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Alive

  :The French Revolution" by Mary Wollstonecraft, Bk. V, (Ch. 4), 1794.

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• Most of the time when "universal" is used, it's just a euphamism for "white"; white themes, white significance, white culture.

  Merle Woo

  White, Justice, Diversity

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• Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

  Frances Wright

  Rights, Justice, Diversity

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.25

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• Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

  William Butler Yeats

  Teaching, Fire, Filling Up

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• We were trying to transform America, not triumph over white folk.

  Andrew Young

  White, America, Justice

  Andrew Young (1996). “An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America”, Harpercollins

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• No nation as rich as ours should have so many people isolated on islands of poverty in such a sea of material wealth.

  Andrew Young

  Islands, Should Have, Sea

  Andrew Young (1994). “A Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

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• We must take the profit out of prejudice.

  Coleman Young

  Justice, Diversity, Prejudice

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• The danger is that people may mistake what is basically a change in vocabulary for a change in behavior, practices, and attitudes. While practically all Americans have learned to talk inoffensively, not enough have learned to think differently, nor act positively.

  Whitney M. Young

  Attitude, Mistake, Thinking

  Whitney M. Young (1964). “To be equal”

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• Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.

  Whitney M. Young

  Beautiful, Mother, Jobs

  Whitney M. Young (1969). “Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society”

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• We do not want the peace of slaves nor the peace of the grave.

  Emiliano Zapata

  Justice, Diversity, Want

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• The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.

  Norman Cousins

  War, Justice, Obsession

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• ...In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work.

  Paul Farmer

  Medicine, Justice, World

  Paul Farmer (2004). “Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor”, p.157, Univ of California Press

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• Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.

  Kim Dae-jung

  Justice, Democracy, Development

  Dae Jung Kim (2004). “The 21st century and the Korean people: selected speeches of Kim Dae-jung, 1998-2004”

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• Our motto is to work for peace based on social justice. Our mandate is to improve the condition, health and safety of workers, and our mission is universal.

  David A. Morse

  Safety, Justice, Motto

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• If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free?

  June Jordan

  Heart, Gay, Justice

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• I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade-or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere.

  Belva Ann Lockwood

  Sex, Women, Believe

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• All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant, and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some but cold iron to others) of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race? If so, what is the ground of this limitation?

  Harriet Martineau

  Sex, Iron, Race

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.179

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• The mind is not sex-typed.

  Margaret Mead

  Sex, Justice, Mind

  Blackberry Winter ch. 5 (1972)

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• What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.

  Margaret Mead

  Acceptance, Justice, Awareness

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• I had reached the conclusion myself that sex was not a division but a continuum, that almost nobody was altogether of one sex or another, and that the infinite subtlety of the shading from one extreme to the other was one of the most beautiful of nature's phenomena.

  Jan Morris

  Beautiful, Sex, Justice

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• As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew, much of what I call history, others will not. But answering that challenge of exclusion is the work of a lifetime.

  Joan Nestle

  Justice, Challenges, Exclusion

  Joan Nestle (1987). “A restricted country: essays and short stories”

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• Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant.

  Anna Quindlen

  Girl, Country, Silly

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• When I say my brother and his wife are heterosexual, that doesn't mean I'm talking about their sex lives. Likewise, when we say someone is gay, we're talking about sexual orientation, not their sexual activity.

  Vito Russo

  Brother, Sex, Mean

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