Direct Action Quotes

The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations, all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we'll begin to change things.

Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Cryptography is the ultimate form of non-violent direct action.

Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works.

Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.

If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.

I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is sadly called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed.

It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

I believe it's time for direct action on climate change, standing together as ordinary Australians to take control of our shared future.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.

Each of us contributes our own piece to the whole, each in our own way, each in our own time with the gifts and talents that are ours. You ask about possible vehicles for change: question, stand, speak, act. Engage in unruly behavior. Disturb the status quo. Take direct action. Commit civil disobedience. Make art. Build community. Dance. Sing. Farm. Cook. Create something beautiful and then give it away. Find your own monkey wrench and use it with the force of love. Sharpen your pencil. Vote.

For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never."

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was 'well timed,' according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This 'wait' has almost always meant 'never.' We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.

There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action - of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power.

Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

When the democratic deficit is so enormous, people are left with very little option but to take peaceful, non-violent direct action.

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

For some of the large indignities of life, the best remedy is direct action. For the small indignities, the best remedy is a Charlie Chaplin movie. The hard part is knowing the difference.

The idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas and anarchist movements. I think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. Anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.

Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action

The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.

Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

Causes was founded with the mission of empowering anyone to change the world. Our model is based upon the belief that everyone has the power to have an outsized impact on the world by banding together with other like-minded individuals, taking direct action, and inspiring their friends and their friends' friends to join in.

For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .

We had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community.

In no way have we contemplated the intervention of the army in tasks that belong to police at the different levels of government. What is contemplated .. is support from the army in these tasks but not in direct actions that correspond to municipal, state and federal police.

Education without direction is a one-sided social value. Direct action without education is a meaningless expression of pure energy.

Strike is always a form of direct action. With the strike, too, you are not asking government to make things easier for you by passing legislation, you are taking a direct action against the employer.

Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.

The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

We are a representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through direct action. And that's enshrined in our Constitution and in our values.