Tim Wise Quotes

I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.

Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action.

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.

Do you know what social justice is? Do you know what social reform is? I didn't either, but reform and social justice are what I intend to do.

Social justice is what drives me; it's why I'm here.

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

Regardless of how much media coverage will be received, talking and raising awareness about social injustice isn't enough.

I am unapologetic about the need for social change, greater inclusion, and equity.

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

When I look at our communities, our country, our justice system, those are things I want to change and I'm committed to changing, and that's going to take sacrifice. Laying the foundation is the hardest part and requires a lot of sacrifice and time.

It really is systematic oppression that is so deeply ingrained into the very fabric of American society... Shedding a light on it, in whatever way possible, is the only way to create change.

The main lesson I took from Gamergate is that asking the status quo to do the right thing doesn't work.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.

Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.

One feels so despairing on some levels about what's going on in our culture, in regards to things like gender inequality. But there is progress. There is enhanced empathy and respect for others, we are fighting the tide, even though it seems like a tug of war sometimes.

I have never witnessed poverty like I did in Haiti. The kind that is so deep and wide-reaching that it feels impossible to make a difference. But I found that lives can and are being changed. It may take a lot of work and time but Concern has, and continues to make, serious progress because they stayed long after the world moved on.

No religion will ever make me forget the condition of our people in this country...No God, no religion, no nothing will make me forget it until it stops, until it's elimitnated. I want to make that point clear.

The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks--especially with cranks. . . . Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.

Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world.

If your white privilege and class privilege protects you, then you have an obligation to use that privilege to take stands that work to end the injustice that grants that privilege in the first place.

When you're fighting for civil rights, it's sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Civil rights are an evolution; and you have to bring people along.

Movements are not radical. Movements are the American way. A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women's voting. The Populist movement, the Progressive movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's movement - the examples go on and on of 'little people' getting together and telling the truth about their lives. They made our government act.

We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt.