I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: "The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people - and that’s enough." Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, "Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out!' [...] That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. You know, if all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.
This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff - you should get over that quickly. The world is messy; there are ambiguities, People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.
Wenn ihr die liebt, die euch lieben, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Denn auch die Sünder lieben die, von denen sie geliebt werden. Und wenn ihr denen Gutes tut, die euch Gutes tun, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Das tun auch die Sünder. Und wenn ihr denen Geld leiht, von denen ihr es zurückzubekommen hofft, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Auch die Sünder leihen Sündern, um das Gleiche zurückzubekommen. Doch ihr sollt eure Feinde lieben und Gutes tun und leihen, wo ihr nichts zurückerhoffen könnt.
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 the something that I can do.
If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.
Wenn ihr mit einer Zeitmaschine in die Vergangenheit zurück reist, müsst ihr höllisch aufpassen, nicht durch eine kleine Handlung den Lauf der Geschichte radikal zu verändern.
Warum glaubt ihr nicht, dass ihr das in der Gegenwart könnt?
Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental problem the world faces. Yet, the problem, which is growing ever more critical, is being ignored because who gets excited about dirt?
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Zweifle nie daran, dass eine kleine Gruppe von umsichtigen, engagierten Bürgern die Welt verändern kann. Tatsächlich sind das die einzigen, die es je getan haben.
Die Bedrohung durch den Anti-Intellektualismus war eine Konstante, die sich durch unser politisches und kulturelles Leben zieht, genährt durch die falsche Annahme, dass Demokratie bedeutet: "Meine Ignoranz ist genauso viel wert wie Dein Wissen."
Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.' They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.
