Motivational Quotes on Benefits of Student Activism
by Whitney Hopler, Communications Manager
What values are most important to you? What issues do you care most about, and why? You truly can change the world for the better when you act on what matters most to you. You can change yourself positively, as well, since research among college students and others shows that activists can experience greater well-being from their work. Here are some famous quotes on student activism and well-being:
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss
“You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“What we’re really trying to do is build student activism and get students passionate about their community through arts and music, and other forms of outreach.” – Jake Lehman
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Everybody should find a passion or a cause that they can really get behind, but it has to be organic.” – Eva Longoria
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” – Elie Wiesel
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
“The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.” – Anderson Cooper
“The individual activity of one person with backbone will do more than a thousand people with a mere wishbone.” – William Boetcker
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.” – Jennifer Donnelly
“Meaningful student involvement is the process of engaging students as partners in every facet of school change for the purpose strengthening their commitment to education, community and democracy.” – Adam Fletcher
“Activism is a way of life.” – Amos Oz
“Let us be protectors of one another and the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world. But to be protectors, we also have to keep watch over ourselves. Let us not forget that hatred, envy and pride defile our lives. Being protectors, then, also means keeping watch over our emotions, over our hearts, because they are the seat of good and evil intentions: intentions that build up and tear down. We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!” – Pope Francis
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“People of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.” – Barack Obama
“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
“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.” – Albert Einstein
“The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.” – Marcus Garvey
“Say what you want but you never say it with violence!” – Gerard Way
“It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.” – Joss Whedon
“Most good things have already been said far too many times and just need to be lived.” – Shane Claiborne
“Action is the fundamental key to success.” – Pablo Picasso
“Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possibly by a group of people who chose to bear witness and demanded that others bear witness as well.” – Melanie Joy
“You just have to find your activism, and don’t let anyone tell you what that should look like. If you’re doing the work, and you’re getting someone to think, you’re on the right path.” – Angie Thomas
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison
“If you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Carol Bartz
“Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.” – Nicholas Murray Butler
“Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.” – Bono