Viggo Mortensen Quotes

I love seeing young people take a stance and not be afraid to say how they feel, and protest when they feel things are wrong or unjust.

Given this platform of being an Olympic athlete, I think it's really important that we stand up for what we believe in, and we speak out against things that we think are wrong and injust.

I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.

We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

I'm always happy when I'm protesting.

Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor. And perhaps they should understand the role of a community organizer is to help people in distress.

I'm always the one with the activist friends. I've been an activist very little.

I was an activist long before I even entertained the possibility of being an actor.

As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it.

You know, I was a community activist, so I'm used to standing out in front of an elected official's office and protesting.

Social change comes not only from the courtroom, but from talking to the media.

I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.

Activism isn't something you just kind of get involved in and then turn your back on it.

I want to act, if I can, as a bridge for people who read 'Shock Doctrine' or 'No Logo'. People who are sitting out for whatever reasons.

When you see corruption, when you see injustice, you speak up. You don't just shut up and say it's none of my business.

I'd come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.

Even though I grew up and I didn't always like getting dragged to the meetings or the rallies or the speeches, I developed a very strong respect for participating in a democratic process.

Injustice has exhausted people but also pushed them to organize and fight back in very sophisticated ways.

When I was in high school, people would ask me what I wanted to do, and I would always say I wanted to 'lead marches and give speeches.'

When I was 19 or 20, the way I was an activist was by regularly meeting with groups, going to protests, and being there on the ground.

As the Occupy Movement demonstrated, it's tough to change anything when you're talking about everything.

We've seen a lot of people come together, no matter the race, and have support of black people. I think that's a huge thing. I don't know if it's going to fix all our issues, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I go out and I've protested, I've marched.

The great thing about 2017 is that, because of the terrible political state that we're in and that America is in, young people are so vocal at the moment about so many issues, from racism to LGBT rights to beyond. I feel like - especially when I look at my fan-base - people are so vocal about their opinions and so vocal about spreading love. That's really important, and I think it's really amazing that people are talking about that. I just want that to keep happening.

I never really saw myself as an activist but at some point the activist is the only moral position to take.