Social Justice Quotes - Page 24

• The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

  Bertrand Russell

  Two, Justice, Progress

  "Marriage and Morals". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 20, p. 301, en.wikiquote.org. Marriage and Morals.

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• He will deal harshly by a stranger who has not been himself often a traveller or stranger.

  Saadi

  Justice, Diversity, Stranger

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• Since the 1960s, we have seen the failure of the melting pot ideology. This ideology suggested that different historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds could be subordinated to a larger ideology or social amalgam which is "America." This concept obviously did not work, because paradoxically America encourages a politics of contestation.

  Edward Said

  America, Justice, Diversity

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• To my mind by far the greatest danger in scholarship...is not that the individual may fail to master the thought of a school but that a school may succeed in mastering the thought of the individual.

  Geoffrey Sampson

  School, Justice, Diversity

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• I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.

  Patricia Schroeder

  Funny, Justice, Diversity

  Quoted in Current Biography 1978 (1978)

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• Since the most important element of any concept is that its originating question be appropriately framed, any theory demanding an explanation for homosexuality is a problematic one because it maintains our existence as a category of deviance. I mean, no one is running around trying to figure out why some people like sports, for example.

  Sarah Schulman

  Sports, Running, Mean

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• Probably, the nature of homophobia will never be widely interrogated, while we will continue to be excluded from school curricula, subjected to vicious media distortions, or entirely ignored, denied basic civil rights while our demands are ridiculed and derided. But in the midst of all this only one thing has changed for certain. We have changed. We will never go back into the closet.

  Sarah Schulman

  School, Rights, Media

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• Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom? If we can't go hand in hand, I don't want to go.

  Hazel Scott

  Hands, Justice, Diversity

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• Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she's a black woman, seh's in deep trouble.

  Hazel Scott

  Justice, Diversity, Black

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• It isn't those who are taken by force, put in chains, and sold as slaves who are the real slaves; it is those who will accept it, morally and physically.

  Ousmane Sembene

  Real, Taken, Justice

  Ousmane Sembène (1995). “God's Bits of Wood”, p.20, Heinemann

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• We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

  Seneca the Younger

  War, Mad, Justice

  "Moral Letters to Lucilius (Letter XCV)". Book by Seneca the Younger, 1925.

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• I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Motivational, Ambition, Long

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.2064, e-artnow

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• Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.

  B. F. Skinner

  Justice, Doe, Behavior

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• Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

  B. F. Skinner

  School, Moon, Men

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• Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve.

  Dorothee Solle

  People, Justice, Diversity

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• Like the effects of industrial pollution and the new system of global financial markets, the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.

  Susan Sontag

  Justice, Diversity, Important

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• Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.

  Jonathan Schell

  Strength, Encouragement, Knowing

  Jonathan Schell (2005). “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People”

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• There are vivid memories from my childhood-what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose if I wanted to be fair I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers. But the truth is that I went through a lot of hell, and a lot of people did. If we can even the score a little for the workers then we are doing something. Besides, I don't know any other work I like to do better than this. I really don't.

  Cesar Chavez

  Memories, Commitment, People

  Cesar Chavez (2008). “An Organizer's Tale: Speeches”, p.78, Penguin

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• The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

  Cesar Chavez

  Self, Justice, Optimism

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• An ally need not own the land he helps.

  Euripides

  Land, Justice, Allies

  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (1959). “Euripides”

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• Go back home where you came from. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and to raise this country full of grown people.

  Sitting Bull

  Country, Home, People

  Sitting Bull, Mark Diedrich (1998). “Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches”

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• God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.

  Sitting Bull

  Justice, Made, Reservations

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• Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.'

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Passion, Evil, Envy

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek (p. 93), 1960.

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• The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

  Thomas Sowell

  Hands, Order, Deserve You

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.59, Hoover Press

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• At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom.

  Tony Blair

  Struggle, Heart, Responsibility

  Tony Blair's speech to Faithworks, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2005.

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