Obimbo > Obimbo's Quotes

“The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes can't even hear crickets chirping.”
― Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd

“Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich

“We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.”
― Rivera Sun, Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -

“Stories matter.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“America: It's a free country; that is if you can afford it.”
― Rythmic Karma

“In my sentences I go where no man has gone before.”
― George W. Bush

“Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.”
― Jane Addams

“It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.”
― Helen Prejean

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”
― George W. Bush

“And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? ... It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I want it said loudly and clearly that we can define racism in many ways, but it is, in my opinion, intellectually disingenuous to define it in a way that trivializes the role that racial hatred plays. Certainly, not all racism is hate-driven, but to ignore the connection between racial hate and racism is to reduce the concept of racism to a useless theoretical abstraction.”
― David Pilgrim

“The church wanted us to give out food to malnourished children, but they didn't want us to question why they were malnourished to begin with.”
― Elvia Alvarado, Don't Be Afraid, Gringo

“The moment when I am no longer more than a writer, I will cease to write.”
― Albert Camus

“I think we agree, the past is over. ”
― George W. Bush

“A lot of people get upset when you say ‘shit’ or something like that. But do you realize that almost our entire country sat still while they barbecued people in Los Angeles, firebombed a house, burned the people to death? …and you see, this is part of the pathology of people who are so sensitive to some kinds of stylistic offensiveness, and so callous to real cruelty and brutality.”
― Florynce Kennedy

“We can and must respond creatively to the triple crisis and simultaneously overcome dehumanization, economic inequality, and, ecological catastrophe.”
― Vandana Shiva

“But if you sit around thinking what to do and end up not doing anything, why bother even thinking about it? You're better off going out on the town and having a good time. No, we have to think and act. That's what we're doing here, and that's what you have to do.”
― Elvia Alvarado, Don't Be Afraid, Gringo

“Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”
― Angela Davis

“If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal.”
― Mavis Leno

“So many problems, however infinitely varied they first appear, turn out to be matters of money. I can't tell you how much this offends me. The value of money is a scam perpetrated by those who have it over those who dont; it's the Emperor's New Clothes gone global.”
― Karen Joy Fowler

“Petitions, picket lines, civil disobedience—this kind of political mobilization required a certain shift in vision. “For a protest movement to arise out of [the] traumas of daily life,” the sociologists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have observed, “the social arrangements that are ordinarily perceived as just and immutable must come to seem both unjust and mutable.” This usually happened during extraordinary times, when large-scale social transformations or economic disturbances—the postwar housing shortage, say—profoundly upset the status quo. But it was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them—which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“The role of an activist is not to lead the masses with a flag draped around his or her shoulders. Activists meet a few people at a time in a coffee shop to explain in hushed tones why they should believe when no one else does. An activist’s moment is not the moment of change; it is the period when change seems impossible.”
― Ahmed Salah, You Are Under Arrest for Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution: A Memoir

“This may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about.. when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”
― George W. Bush

“No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“What else is a nation but a patchwork of cities and towns; cities and towns a patchwork of neighborhoods; and neighborhoods a patchwork of homes?”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Trailer park residents rarely raised a fuss about a neighbor’s eviction, whether that person was a known drug addict or not. Evictions were deserved, understood to be the outcome of individual failure. They “helped get rid of the riffraff,” some said. No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“It was not that low-income renters didn’t know their rights. They just knew those rights would cost them.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Bravehearted Musings
Seated, lost for where to begin (not how to begin) this book gets birthed”
― Wambui Ngabura