J. Donald Walters Quotes

We're gonna need more than winning elections; we're gonna need to change the way people think, and they're not gonna change what they think if there's no counter to the way liberalism is presented in the pop culture.

Of course, no one should be trapped in bad schools or bad neighborhoods. No one. But I think we need to be asking a larger question: How do we change the norm, the larger context that people seem to accept as a given? Are we so thoroughly resigned to what "is" that we cannot even begin a serious conversation about how to create what ought to be?

If you look at the world today, there are as many solutions as there are problems. I think that is a big part of creativity. That's why I started Urban Zen. Because I wanted to dress and address people.

Many young people are hungry for new thinking. So I invite them to use the tools and other resources we have developed to accelerate the shift from domination to partnership.

Revolutions are spiritual acts. They appear first in people, then in politics and the economy. New people form new structures. The transformation we want is first of all spiritual; that will necessarily change the way things are.

The correct rate of speed in innovating changes in long-standing social customs has not yet been determined by even the most expert of the experts. Personally I am beginning to think there is more danger in lagging than in speeding up cultural change to keep pace with mechanical change.

My hope is that when someone has that call to action, they realize that everybody can do something, even if that's just changing their own thinking. Women have to change the way they think, too. Not just men.

No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and - like the glacier march - is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods.

Violence maims not only the body but also the mind and spirit. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, it lies "on the side of belief and persuasion." If we are to counter violence by offering young people ways to think differently about their world and the choices before them, they must be empowered to recognize themselves in any analysis of violence, and in doing so to acknowledge that it speaks to their lives meaningfully.

I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.

I think the most important thing is discovering an idea that moves you, and then letting people who are moved by that idea find each other, and work together. A lot of times people focus on the technical side-"oh, I've got to take a class on non-profit development." Too few people allow themselves to think outside the box with regard to their issue areas.

It's tougher for me. But I don't think that's imperative to me starting a new movement, or revive an old movement, to help people.

I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it?

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

I'm interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don't like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can't think of.

I'm trying to make something every time that feels new and surprises people. Hopefully at least one person. But it's not like I turn it off. I don't make a movie and then go back to my normal life. When I'm finishing one movie the next day I'm thinking about the next one.

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.

We're trying to convey how much easier it is than most people think, especially young people, to turn the country around if they focus on the levers, if they focus on Congress, and state legislatures.

I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.

I think the American people recognize that the world has shrunk. That it's interconnected. That you're not going to put that genie back in the bottle.

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.

Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn't perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America's ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there's always going to be a backlash within a movement every time. When I think about race, there were a lot of pockets of people that were still living in fear under the Obama administration, but we were in this blissful celebration mode. Now we are constantly reminded that, although there are lots of good people in the world, there are just as many horrible people.

In death, you once more challenge people from every strata, religion, and position to think about how their own actions do and can change the world for better or worse.

People are fed up - and I think quite rightfully so. But what are they proposing as an alternative to just being upset or feeling disillusioned or abandoned? That kind of protest movement really needs to happen on a much bigger scale, but there needs to be a clearer message.

I realized that women are still not seen as equal to men. We had a big wave of feminism just before my generation was born. We're still sitting on this wave. There are very militant people and very aggressive women at the top of that wave but I think we have a new version of it now.