Milan Kundera Quotes

No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

Social change without music would be void of soul. Nonviolence without music, meditation, action, and a willingness to take risks probably doesn't exist.

In any social revolution the one thing that keeps it alive is hope.

Disobey the rules; ask for more; leave your wretchedness behind; organize with your brothers and sisters; never accept the hand of fate.

It is the moral force which carries a movement forward.

Movements don't die, because struggle doesn't die.

I try to surround myself with the people who genuinely believe in changing things, that are angry about it and want to make changes and want to make a change and are willing.

I once dreamed of launching revolutions, sparking movements, mobilizing the masses, and changing everything. Now I’ve learned the beauty and profound significance of simply loving my neighbor.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.

If a person with a bullet in Dallas can change the world, imagine a person with an idea could do.

I don't think anyone in their right mind takes me serious.

Security isn't what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection.

Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it's the only thing that ever has.

An oppressed people will always rise.

I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning - organize.

There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive…. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world, I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that-which is the foundation of activism.

When you look at the times in history when change was brought about, there were two factors: crisis and leadership.

Organize! Educate! Agitate!

It is not leaders who make movements; it is movements that make leaders.

It was imperative to make common cause with the oppressed in order to secure a new system opposed to the ambitions and governing habits of the oppressors.

THE IRISH PEOPLE TO THE WORLD History bears testimony to the intensity of our sufferings …. Our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields—against the aristocratic leeches who drain alike our blood and theirs. Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause…. Avenge yourselves…. Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic

Movements aren’t built on leadership but on the movement itself — of individuals taking that first step from inertia to action, as if passing through a doorway