Buffy Sainte-Marie Quotes

I'm pretty political when it comes to human rights and things like that.

I always saw politics as an expansion of my role as a mom.

I'm not an activist; I don't look for controversy. I'm not a political person, but I'm a person with compassion. I care passionately about equal rights. I care about human rights. I care about animal rights.

To me, politics is an extension of what I do in medicine.

I am aware that in presenting myself as an advocate for the Indians and their rights, I shall claim but little sympathy from the community at large, and that I shall stand very much alone....I feel it is my imperative to adhere to ... a principle enduring as life itself. That principle is to protect the Indian against wrong and oppression, and to vindicate him in the enjoyment of rights which have been solemnly guaranteed to him by this Government.

[Announcing his retirement:] While I will retire my seat, I will not retire my views or retire my voice.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.

I'm a person who's always been politically active and passionate about people's rights.

TDP is always very assertive for public interest.

I have struggled in life and this has made me sensitive towards the needs of others. Politics gives you the opportunity to really do something.

I'm realizing this more and more that it's one thing to get involved with your own political beliefs and stand behind you believe in personally.

When John Kennedy was assassinated I was twenty-three, a stockbroker on Wall Street and married, and I never ever thought that politics would be anything that I would be a part of. But I realized that I had to get involved. Then, when Martin Luther King was assassinated and the Vietnam War was raging, I felt that my world was falling apart. I had these two beautiful children - three and one - and I just said, "I have to make it better."

I often traveled to Nicaragua to speak against repressive policies by the Sandinista government.

I'm really interested in social justice, and if an artist has a certain power of being heard and voicing something important, it's right to do it. It could still be done in such a way that it's not aggressive or overly didactic. I'm trying to find that form.

I don't think there was really a time when I have not been politically aware.

I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on.

And I'm not apolitical - I'm very specific in my politics. But a lot of the time it's nobody's business unless you're over at my house having dinner.

I have been a lifelong community activist and frankly did not dream of being in public office.

I grew up in Sydney in a very political household, where we were all for the underdog.

My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.

My cartoons haven't been about the politics of the day or about the personalities; I'm more interested in campaigning about the issues.

I think to many people the term 'activist film' implies a film with a single point of view - something designed to provoke outrage and urge action on a particular issue - sort of the film equivalent of a rally. 'If a Tree Falls' is not that kind of film.

I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.

I am a woman with a calling for social struggle and public service.

I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor.