Social Justice quotes

The history of social justice is written in sentences that became unignorable — declarations, letters from jail cells, speeches given to rooms that did not want to hear them. The quotes here come from activists, writers, and ordinary people who refused to let injustice be treated as normal. They are not meant to make you feel virtuous. They are meant to clarify what is at stake and point at the slow, difficult work of moving the world a little toward fairness. Read them as invitations, not conclusions.

• The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

  Alice Walker

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

  Harriet Tubman

• The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

  Martin Luther King Jr. · Strength to Love

• The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

  Audre Lorde · Sister Outsider

• The function of freedom is to free someone else.

  Toni Morrison

• Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

  Audre Lorde · A Burst of Light

• I raise up my voice — not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.

  Malala Yousafzai · I Am Malala

• The time is always right to do what is right.

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

  Audre Lorde

• How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

  Anne Frank · The Diary of a Young Girl

• An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

  Mahatma Gandhi

• First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars.

  Harriet Tubman

• If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

  Malcolm X

• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

  Nelson Mandela

• Your silence will not protect you.

  Audre Lorde · The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

• You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

  Mahatma Gandhi

• We are the ones we have been waiting for.

  June Jordan · Poem for South African Women

• When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.

  Malala Yousafzai · I Am Malala

• One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.

  Malala Yousafzai · United Nations Speech

• The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.

  Wael Ghonim

• I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

  Martin Luther King Jr. · Where Do We Go from Here