Bill McKibben Quotes

Being politically active is "more about doing things, not just standing for some platform or being involved in some political party."

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

I think voting is the lowest form of political action that you can do. A lot of times, it keeps people from doing stronger things.

One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.

A grievance is a political action. It's not just African-Americans.

Activism could be defined as activities engaged in by individuals to change there of others situation.

View talk radio not as entertainment but as a tool for organizing and action.

You have to get an individual who's willing to actually struggle with the system to change it. As long as you have people who - to make substantive changes, to make infrastructure changes.

The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.

I believe activism is the true source of change in the world. Pushing to change social structures in communities that you are a part of is critical for making real lasting change.

Even if you can't be an activist every day, when you can be, do it.

Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.

I think people are really talking about it. Having conversations about how to make change.

I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.

We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.

We now have over a hundred thousand people who are signed up on our campaign and our petition to open up the debate, and we're encouraging people to come and to join us and to insist that we need to be included.

All social change begins with a conversation.

As Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist, said: "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." You need the truth, and you also need a demand, and you need to bring that demand into the realm of electoral politics. If you don't do that, it's very hard to get such an entrenched machine to move.

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

Look at what I've done my entire life. I have been working on behalf of civil rights, women's rights, human rights for years and I know how challenging it is to change our political system and I have the highest regard for those who have put themselves on the line.