"Activism's NOT for sissies!"

In honor of an online friend and great woman who said, "activism's not for sissies!" and blogs over at "Family Preservation" Blogspot (www.familypreservation.blogspot.com ~ linked above) I'd like to re-post some of her favorite inspirational quotes here...

The problems we face will not be solved by the minds that created them ~ Albert Einstein

I would not waste my time on friction, when it could be turned into momentum. ~ Frances Willar

Rebels and dissidents challenge the complacent belief in a just world, and...they are usually denigrated for their efforts. While they are alive, they may be called "cantankerous", "crazy", "hysterical", "uppity", or "duped". Dead, some of them become saints and heroes, the sterling characters of history. It's a matter of proportion. One angry rebel is crazy, three is a conspiracy, fifty is a movement. ~ Carol Travis

The people are the only ones capable of transforming society. ~ Rigoberta Manchu

First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Gandhi

All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Schoepenhauer

Every great achievement was once considered impossible. ~ H.J. Brown

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire

Be careful when you battle monsters lest you become one. - Nietzsche

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

All that the evil forces need to win the world is for good men to do nothing. ~ Edmund Burke

Too see right and not do it is want of courage. ~ Confucius

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has. ~ Margaret Mead

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not deter us from support of a cause we believe to be just. ~ A. Lincoln

You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. ~ R. Tagore

I never gave them hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell. ~ H. Truman

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for. ~ Chief Justice Earl Warren

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

When anyone steps out of the system and tells the truth, lives the truth, that person enables everyone else to peer behind the curtain too. ~ Walter Wink

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. ~ Oscar Wilde

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do. ~ Edward Everett Hale

No one knows what he can do till he tries. ~ Publilius Syrus

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them. ~ Sojourner Truth, 1851

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic. ~ Dave Barry

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. ~John Cage

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Use what talent you posses; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. ~ Henry van Dyke

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit. ~ Wade Davis

Speak your mind - even if your voice shakes. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants. ~ Maggie Kuhn, Gray Panthers

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~ Oscar Wilde

And the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

Separate reeds are weak and easily broken but bound together they are strong and hard to tear apart. ~ The Midrash

Success is not to be measured by the position one has reached in life, rather by the obstacles overcome while trying to succeed. ~ Booker T. Washington

You can look at a scar and see hurt, or you can look at a scar and see healing.Y ~ Sheri Reynol, "A Gracious Plenty"

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers' names. — Alice Walker

When a mother is forced to choose between the child and the culture, there is something abhorrently cruel and unconsidered about that culture. A culture that requires harm to one's soul in order to follow the culture's proscriptions is a very sick culture indeed. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes "Women Who Run With Wolves"

In life, pain and suffering are inevitable; however, being miserable is optional. Anon.

The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals. ~ Rensis Likert

Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. ~ Hebbel

In modern society we are seeing that its just not enough to have truth on your side. You need to let people know about it. ~ Nick Matzke

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they don’t remain the way they are. ~ St. Augustine