Barack Obama Quotes

Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips.

The goal is to talk about the issues that are happening in the USA with the ultimate goal of making change. Not just some rebellious act that we're trying to have against our country.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

Activism could be defined as activities engaged in by individuals to change there of others situation.

If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

This is an amazing country, for all of its faults. My feeling is, dig in and let's try to change the world. Dissent is not only your right, it's your duty.

Nothing happens in America without pressure.

I had the blessing of opportunity. You need the folks in the boardroom who have consciences and the people in the streets who can picket at the right time.

If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

When I look at our communities, our country, our justice system, those are things I want to change and I'm committed to changing, and that's going to take sacrifice. Laying the foundation is the hardest part and requires a lot of sacrifice and time.

It was clear to us that social movements and activism can only take us so far in our mission.

I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

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.

It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange.

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.

These people in Mississippi State, they are not "down"; all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.

When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary.

Change only takes place through action, not through meditation and prayer.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

Nonviolence with Dr. [Martin Luther ]King is only a method. That's not his objective.

You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life.