Asma Jahangir Quotes

Pacifism as a mass movement aims to avoid suffering; pacifists often say that no cause is worth suffering or dying for. The ethos of Solidarity is based on an opposite premise - that there are causes worth suffering and dying for.

Surrender . . .sacrificing my life or suffering in order to change what needs to be changed

The cry of the oppressed has entered not only into my ears, but into my soul, so that while I live, I cannot hold my peace.

Probably I understand very much the people who rise against injustice.

They think that, if we were just smart enough, we'd be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell 'em, and I do tell 'em, Oh, we're plenty smart, oh yeah - we know what's goin' on. And we don't like what's goin' on. And we're not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

You can only appreciate freedom when you find yourself in a position to fight for someone else's freedom and not worry about your own.

For me personally, I'm an activist, so I see a lot of turmoil and heartache in the world and tragedy.

The world I live in is loathsome to me, but I feel one with the men who suffer in it

It's hard to get people to empathize with the poor. You can get some people to sympathize with the poor, but to empathize is actually very hard, because most people are not poor. I realized that scarcity gives you a thread.

I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth.

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.

I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that's ever happened to me has taught me compassion.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.

I have suffered as much as Martin Luther King. Only I didn't get the bullet. And I would have taken the bullet if I could have.

Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.

What breaks my heart is suffering of any kind. Too often, our world is divisive and cruel where it needs to be uniting and loving.

We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men.

Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue.

I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.

Until the world in some way changes, then my responsibility is to share what I know and more importantly to behave like I know about the extraordinary work and effort and blood shed for me to be able to sit here.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.