John Carlos Quotes

Self-reform automatically brings about social reform.

Take a stand for what's right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you'll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool.

I need to take toward a lot of things that will refine me and make me better suited for leading anyone out of any place of injustice to a place of justice.

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice.

One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor and, instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal.

If you join a fight for social justice you may win or lose, but just by being part of the struggle, you win, and your life will be better for it.

I find myself moved by social justice issues. I'm not sure where that will lead me. I'm willing to nurture it.

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

There are things that you can do on an individual level, even as you continue to fight oppression systemically, that make things a little bit better for an identifiable group.

The rage is still there but I found the right kind of channel, because it's tied to a love, it's tied to a struggle for justice. And most importantly, for me, it's tied to a recognition that I am a cracked vessel.

We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.

We have a choice: to spend a lot of time fighting for what we know is right, or to just accept what we know is wrong. We must stand up for our rights and for the rights of others, even if most people say we can't win.

The final battle against intolerance is to be fought - not in the chambers of any legislature - but in the hearts of men.

My job is to steel the backbone of people on the frontlines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles. And people who are fighting on a, on a daily basis, at a grass roots level.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

Anytime I've had a big thing that's ever pierced and cut across the Internet, it was a fight for justice. Justice. And when you say justice, it doesn't have to be war. Justice could just be clearing a path for people to dream properly.

We fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice.

When do corporations begin to lose their credibility? They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought every social justice movement in this country.

A good song reminds us what we're fighting for.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there's something about the system that's keeping him from getting his share, then I think he's well within his rights to fight to change that.

If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.