Marcel Ophuls Quotes

I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.

We have to speak truth to power.

You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you're compelled to say something. To speak out against it.

Some laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are.

If Occupy Wall Street can see their way to more collaboration with the union movement, then there will be a great deal of political action possible.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

If a policy is wrongheaded, feckless and corrupt, I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.

What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does.

If women are being oppressed in Egypt or children are being forced to join armies in the Congo, for example, it is not only acceptable but wonderful for Americans to be concerned, outraged, and active.

I grew up in a strongly socialist family. While I was at school, I worked in party politics and with organizations like the Anti-Nazi League. Everywhere I saw it, I fought prejudice.

To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.

I was a sports fan, but I also went to peace marches.

I will never regret not denouncing apartheid.

The liberals in the House strongly resemble liberals I have known through the last two decades in the civil rights conflict. When it comes time to show on which side they will be counted, they excuse themselves.

There's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

I was always interested in social change but never actually did anything about it.

No one who passively endures an injustice against himself has the material in him to struggle for the rights of others. The one who patiently forbears becomes an accessory to the injustice done to others. He who resists the injustice which he himself meets can open up the way to a higher right for others.

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated.

And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

I have a very strong political outlook, and that is something I'd like to take more responsibility for in my life. I don't believe in utilising certain aspects of the power I have with celebrity to push that forward, but I would like to make some films that address some of those political issues.

I think it's so important as an artist to stand up for what you believe in, and I think that if equal rights is something that you really believe in, and you have a voice that people listen to, and you need to share that - I think that's really important.

To me, this is from a Buddhist perspective or whatever, sometimes people who are working out their political beliefs, they can rage against the man, and yet at the same time can be oblivious to their own way of stepping on the foot of the person right next to them.

Where were the saints to try and change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but do away with slavery?