The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

• Martin Luther King Jr., Minister and Activist

“You and I have to make it a world problem, make the world aware that there'll be no peace on this earth as long as our human rights are being violated in America. Then the world will have to step in and try and see that our human rights are respected and recognized.”

• Malcolm X, Minister and Leader

Life is Poetic.

• Lisa Ray, Writer and Activist

“You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk.”

• Rosalyn Carter, Former First Lady of the United States

“…I would speak about one last quality of an intellectual and political nature that a progressive social worker ought to cultivate, to develop, to perfect, in her or in his practice, and that is an understanding of what is historically possible.”

• Paulo Freire, Educator

We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions.

• Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister

If you don't have the capacity to change yourself and your own attitudes, then nothing around you can be changed.

• Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

• Martin Luther King, Jr., Minister and Activist

“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.”

— Maya Angelou

“We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”

• Malcolm X, Minister and Leader

“The purpose of education is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.”

• James Baldwin – Author

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."

• Harriet Tubman, Abolitionist and Social Activist

“The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House”

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare."

• Audre Lorde, Writer and Warrior

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

• Barack Obama, 44^th President of the United States

“When we do this work of organizing against racism, hetero-patriarchy, capitalism — organizing to change the world — there are no guarantees, to use Stuart Hall’s phrase, that our work will have an immediate effect” - but we have to do it as if it were possible.”

• Angela Davis – legal scholar

“Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.”

• Yuri Kochiyama, Activist

“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

• Paulo Freire, Educator

open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.

• bell hooks, Feminist

”The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.”

• W. E. B. Dubois, Sociologist

“I am a Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet doing my work, coming to ask you if you're doing yours…”

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare."

“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

• Audre Lorde, Writer and Warrior

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any“

• Alice Walker, Author