Whitney M. Young Quotes

I have my chops in organizing, and I know how to create political space through movement building.

I don't think there's any one definition, but to do effective political work you have to have vision and practicality, and learn how to persuade people that what you feel needs to be done does need to be done.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

I love TV, I love writing, but I love movements more.

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

Movements aren’t built on leadership but on the movement itself — of individuals taking that first step from inertia to action, as if passing through a doorway

Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

Being an activist is not easy.

I'm an organizer at heart. Organizers know that giving information, being in front of people, talking to people, to build our movement for the kind of country that we see is the most important thing.

To me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much as you can, knowing that whatever you see is going to be partial. That you possess a partial consciousness in an infinite and expanding universe.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.

Get informed. Get outraged. Get inspired. Get active.

There is a weapon we can fight with. That is the weapon of political action.

If the government fails to listen to your demands, then you will decide what is best for you.

We can all become activists and raise questions.

My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

I've never been involved in any kind of political movement.

Traditionalists will have to master techniques of sustained activism formerly monopolized by the left.

An activist is one who is actively involved in creating community, whether that is locally in their neighborhood or internationally. It is an admirable quality.

I was always interested in social change but never actually did anything about it.

I'm interested in people who can take the movement somewhere.