ACT UP Quotes

I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor.

I want to be the voice and the vision for the poor and the powerless.

They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become.

The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not.

You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you're compelled to say something. To speak out against it.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power - and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor.

I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

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.

I like to be able to raise people's consciousness, yes. And to remind that those of us involved in the receiving end of the oppression, we have a duty.

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

Silence is complicity. Speak now or surrender your ground.

There are brilliant out lesbians and gay men and bisexuals and transgendered people and heterosexuals keeping the fire of change alive. Not a day goes by when I don't feel grateful to them for their work.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

We are poor and our allies are few, but we have our bodies and justice as our tools.

We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree; We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.

It’s very easy to protest when you have a job

When men hold their peace, the stones will cry out.

Islam does not command us to fight against other religions but against oppression and poverty.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

For over twenty years, Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with those on the margins and those whose burdens are more than they can bear; it stands with the poor and the powerless, with the easily-despised and the readily-left out.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.