Tom Stoppard Quotes

I try to be outraged by things that other people are just very accepting of, as though they're normal and can't be changed. A lot of what I write about is, 'Hey, you know, this stuff is really awful, and it doesn't need to be, and that's why it's so offensive.' Things should be better.

Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

Let's face it: There are people who are extremists in every corner of society, and whatever flag they're waving is something Bad Religion has stood against.

I wish for you all, each of you, to have your own motive for indignation. This is precious. When something outrages you as I was outraged by Nazism, then people become militant, strong, and involved.

White collar conservative flashin down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me, they all assume my kind will drop and die, but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society.

The pogroms are oil for the wheels of revolution.

Mrs. Hoover has offered to the South and to the nation an arrogant insult yesterday.

Rebellion is the necessary result of injustice. It may not always achieve its purpose, or be intended to do so, but a conviction of injustice endured must precede articulate rebellion. Nor is it always certain that injustice will be followed by rebellion – it would be very much better for the world if this was the case. But where the victims of aggression or custom are ignorant and disunited, the opportunities for reasoned and effective revolt are practically reduced to nothing…

I'll continue fighting as long as these social injustices exist.

At the end of the day, violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.

I had to get a close-hand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it.

If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly.

I've always hated oppression.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of darkness.

Political hypocrisy and racism make me hot under the collar.

The character of Robin Hood stands for the deep anger of the dispossessed against the ruling classes.

I'm incredibly defiant against neo-Nazis and skinheads.

You know, anytime you take one group and you blame them for a problem, there is an issue.

This is how a revolution begins. It begins when someone grows tired of standing idly by, waiting for history's arc to bend toward justice, and instead decides to give it a swift shove. It begins when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the segregated South.

I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist. To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized.

When we feel helpless later in life, fear makes us scapegoat others. Instead of fixing the problems, we say, 'Oh, it's all their fault - those women or immigrants are infesting our country.' Rather than useful protest or constructive solutions, we get angry at these handy targets.

Humans can be cruel - kids and adults alike. That doesn't mean they have to be forced to a specific stereotype.

Hate crimes are still happening. No matter how evolved we think society is going, there seems to be a winding back, especially in this day and age where these old values seem to be emerging from the darkness.