Mike Leach Quotes

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

No one who passively endures an injustice against himself has the material in him to struggle for the rights of others. The one who patiently forbears becomes an accessory to the injustice done to others. He who resists the injustice which he himself meets can open up the way to a higher right for others.

The purpose of influence is to speak up for those who have no influence.

Go out and speak for the inarticulate and submerged.

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

This stand wasn't because I feel like I'm being put down in any kind of way. This is because I'm seeing things happen to people that don't have a voice: people that don't have a platform to talk and have their voices heard and affect change. So I'm in the position where I can do that, and I'm going to do that for people that can't.

When marginalized people gain voice and center their own experiences, things begin changing. And we see this in all kinds of grassroots movements.

My family are so proud of me for standing up for marginalised people in nerd communities.

Am I attracted to people who want to give other people a voice? Yes I am, and that may be a 'common denominator with the characters that I play.

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay.

Speaking out is important for me because everyone should be treated equally.

I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.

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've learned how to measure what I say. Al Sharpton in 1986 was trying to be heard. I was a local guy and was like, 'Y'all are ignoring us.'

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 of the people; black, white, everyday, oppressed people. A person trying to make it and to do it right.

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.

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

I am now using media as a tool to bring attention to marginalized people.

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated.

I've been a voice for many people.

There isn't much point in the whole 'celebrity' nonsense unless one is prepared to go out on a limb and, one hopes, speak up for some under-represented section of the community.

Each one of our ideas should benefit the people with less power than us.

My job as an artist is to speak up for those who might be perceived as the losers. Or those who can't shout. No wonder public-school people always get into politics or acting: they're taught to shout that much more loudly.

When I write, I have always tried to be on the side of the weak. The side of the powerful is not literature's side.