Tommy Chong Quotes

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

You gotta call it out first; it always has to be called out when we need social change, but this is how social change happens: you call it out. People had to call out child labor. People had to call out, 'Hey time's up; we need to vote. We live in this country.' People had to call out 'time's up' on enslaving people, you know.

I feel that my purpose is to shed light on some of the darker sides of our world, and to lend a hand and a voice to people struggling.

When people tell me nothing has changed, I say come walk in my shoes and I will show you change.

I can't help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with.

We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men.

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

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.

Until the world in some way changes, then my responsibility is to share what I know and more importantly to behave like I know about the extraordinary work and effort and blood shed for me to be able to sit here.

If you care about injustice, and if you care about freedom, and you care about human rights, then you care about them everywhere.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

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.

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

The rights of all of us are diminished when the rights of any one of us are threatened.

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing.

We must strip away slogans such as “states’ rights.” We must attach the “wrongs” of society.

… moral ideas are not fixed. The attitude of public opinion towards slavery was completely changed in twenty or thirty years.

I think of those who are so much less fortunate than me all the time. I came out to people clapping and an outpour of support. And the reality is, for a lot of people, they get kicked out of their homes or are faced with violence.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of darkness.

You never completely have your rights, one person, until you all have your rights.