Movement Leadership Quotes

I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?

It takes leadership to improve safety. And I started off the movement in my time, but the person who has done more over the past 20 to 30 years and who has led it is Professor Sid Watkins.

It is a different world than when I was growing up, and you started to just kind of maintain at thirty-five and just hope you can hope it together. People are a lot more vital than I am and doing all kinds of things and leading really important movements.

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.

apolitical movement is always influenced by its leader’s personality.

I'm probably the wrong person to ask. My partner in much of this work [climate movement], who really came up with the divestment campaign with me, Naomi Klein, I think has written powerfully about this.

People who are ambitious - politicians who crave power - think that they're in control of it, but at some point, the movement that they started overtakes them, and they lose the ability to direct things anymore, and they become essentially riders on a wild stallion, and wherever the movement goes, wherever power takes them, they have to go along.

[Martin Luther ] King didn't pick his leadership position. Most movements are not started by single people.

It's not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it's the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

I don't want to start a movement that mirrors religion. I don't want to create the church of the non-believers where I'm the preacher and we're all gathering together and reciting things.

Dr. Martin Luther King was never a man to say 'I've got this' as the leader of the movement. He wasn't always sure that his decisions were correct, because he knew every decision he made was putting lives at risk, including his and his family's lives.

I knew that I was gay in every bone of my body. So I did the only thing I could do. I started the movement.

Who is the conservative movement, where is it located, and who runs it, and who's in charge of it? They can't even agree within the conservative movement who is a conservative and who isn't.

I will not be standing for office. I'm nearing 70; there are younger people within our movement. I just wish to contribute intellectually to the historic process of taking Tunisia from the era of repression to one of democracy.

Fifteen years ago, while I was temporarily chairing meetings of pro-life leaders, I pleaded with the angry males to say no to interviews, and instead let beautiful pro-life women become the face for the movement.