Vivek Murthy Quotes

I'm incredibly impressed by people who organize to achieve a goal, and believe that they can make a difference and then go ahead and do just that. I think it's incredible.

Every person has the ability to influence change. I am grateful that my voice counts, and I am able to influence change. But more than that, there is a certain amount of activism that is engrained in me.

What excites me is that, when things are tough, people become resourceful, and now with the Internet, social networking and the ability for people who in the past had been relatively powerless, they have tools to be able to spread ideas and organize. The urgency is there and the tools are there and I think that the possibility for really, really powerful results is there. I think it's all brewing, it's all bubbling up right now.

I don't know how to change the world but I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody gon clean it up.

For we put the power in the people.

We have to organize. We have to build up coalitions across all of these people who are considered "the other." If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power. I believe in the power of the people.

My kids have lived experiences that could have never been duplicated otherwise. That's one thing about people who get involved in activism, you live so many experiences that otherwise they wouldn't be there. This is why peoples' lives are so enriched.

If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void

Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.

There is no power above people power.

One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history.

I want to get the message out that everybody can make a difference.

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

'Unlikely Brothers' talks about the importance of citizen action and shows why and how we can make a difference.

When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world.

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

As the anti-slavery community, we must together ensure that this attention is transferred into concrete action and results.

Social change comes through people.

It’s only at certain points in history that people realize just how much power that they have.

The real power of any movement is how we work together with other social justice movements.

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

If we are going to realise our ambition of ending the harmful practices of FGM and forced marriage, the role of young people in pushing for change is crucial. We also need to ensure that everyone, from government to civil society, is playing their part.

All of the great social justice advances that we ever had in this country have come not from people with big titles and not from people at the top, but just from everyday people getting together saying 'Enough is enough. I'm going to change this, and I'm going to get involved, and I am going to be engaged.'

People don't realize they have the power. People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish - people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people - and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.