Anthony Lewis Quotes

It is people's willingness to take personal risks and confront the powerful by daring to speak the truth, not the truth itself, that ultimately leads to change.

We have to speak truth to power.

I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares?

Telling the truth - telling thoughtful truths - should not be a revolutionary act. Speaking truths to power should not be sacrificial, but they are.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

I want to tell stories powerful people don't want you to tell. It's not worth getting out of bed otherwise.

When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.

A radical is one who speaks the truth.

I feel like my career is to speak truth to power, and a lot of times, that sounds like troublemaking. If speaking truth is troublemaking, then yes, I will consider myself a professional at that.

Rosa Parks inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble... good trouble, necessary trouble.

Speaking truth to power is actually a form of loyalty.

It takes truth, and it takes speaking truth to power, but because the stranglehold is so tight it seems to take something else - a real political threat.

I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.

The one thing I have never been afraid of is standing before important people and speaking my mind. I represent women who may never have the opportunity to go to the UN or meet with a president. I'm never afraid to speak truth to power.

People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.

Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly.

I hope I don't have to buck the system. But if it requires bucking, I will do it.

I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

When it was not very comfortable, politically, for me, I said things which lots of people didn't like, some of them may have liked. I said my beliefs, my truth, and my convictions, and that's how I am going to continue to do in the future.

We know that when a woman speaks truth to power, there will be attempts to put her down... I'm not going to go anywhere.

If I can, in any way, give people the courage to say, 'Actually, no, the nonsense stops right here,' then I want to be a part of doing that. Especially if that means that our folks will be more free.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.