Challenging Injustice Quotes

You grow up and recognize that in any educated secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognize in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.

Silence is complicity. I believe that.

We also have to think as fighters, celebrities - whatever you want to call us - that we have an obligation to point out stuff that's just completely wrong.

You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.

Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same.

When I see something wrong, I speak up.

I lose film roles because I'm a person who doesn't keep quiet about certain things. But if my heart tells me something is wrong, I'm going to go and do something about it.

Fear hems us in, stops us from thinking clearly, and prevents us from either challenging oppression or engaging calmly with the impersonal fates.

If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it's the sense of injustice.

Trust me, you have to fight. When people are wrong, you've got to let them know it.

I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate. I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering. I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.

Anita Hill thanklessly put herself and her career as a law professor on the line more than 25 years ago to publicly name Clarence Thomas for sexually harassing her at work.

We have got to stop being a society that turns our heads and looks the other way.

I'm not going to stand by and ignore things that I think are important to talk about.

Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always far easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others and fight for your rights. It is always easier to hear an insult and not retaliate than have the courage to fight back against someone stronger than yourself; we can always say we're not hurt by the stones others throw at us, and it's only at night - when we're alone and our wife or our husband or our school friend is asleep - that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice.

To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.

I think we all need to take personal responsibility, and take action when we see anything wrong around us. I do that, when I see any man harassing any woman. I go and stop that, even if they are actors.

So many of the models of courage we've had, ones that are still taught to boys and girls, are about going out to slay the dragon, to kill. It's a courage that's born out of fear, anger, and hate. But there's this other kind of courage. It's the courage to risk your life, not in war, not in battle, not out of fear ... but out of love and a sense of injustice that has to be challenged. It takes far more courage to challenge unjust authority without violence than it takes to kill all the monsters in all the stories told to children about the meaning of bravery.

I want to encourage young women to stand up for each other and speak up when they see others in a tough situation.

So, in the infinitely nobler battle in which you are engaged against error and wrong, if ever repulsed or stricken down, may you always be solaced and cheered by the exulting cry of triumph over some abuse in Church or State, some vice or folly in society, some false opinion or cruelty or guilt which you have overcome! And I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.