Best Social Change Quotes

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride.

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community… Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution – Revolution is but thought carried into action. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.

Technological discoveries are the spermatozoa of social change.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

You can use principles of the free market to drive social change.

Society and personality live in a continuing reciprocal relation with each other. The search for personal change without efforts to change the institutions within which we live and grow will, therefore, be met with only limited reward.

On a personal side, I found Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants to be a great window into how business can be an extension of social change and the critical role the entrepreneur plays in creating progress in society.

I have never thought of my entertainment as being able to bring about social change. I am seriously always looking for the laugh. What it did make me conscious of was having empathy for those without any power in this country. That has always stuck with me.

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope?–
You yourself must change it.

The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Ecopopulism. To change our laws and culture, the green movement justice, political solutions and social change.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.

What’s clear – and exciting – is that communication for social change is growing.

It’s about using social media for social change: creating a community of advocates who can use their voices on behalf of the voiceless, or leverage their talents, skills, knowledge, and resources to put more children into classrooms, or pressure their elected representatives to get global education top of the agenda.

Linguistics is our best tool for bringing about social change and SF is our best tool for testing such changes before they are implemented in the real world, therefore the conjunction of the two is desirable and should be useful.

Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.

Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.

Practically every violent conflict or social change has proved that violence unleashes violence in return.

I’m not an historian and I’m not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who’s walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.

Our institute’s agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.

When we generate utopian visions and hope to make them happen soon – when we elect Barack Obama and expect all our problems to be solved, and solved quickly, by his presidency – the outcome is both predictable and tragic. That is not the way to engage social change in a democracy. And it is not the way to help democracy itself survive and thrive. Democracy is a non-stop experiment. Each generation must help sustain it, which means being in it day-by-day for the long haul.

Social change comes through people.

The role model approach to social change is no substitute for challenging unjust employment practices, educational policies and housing.

The ideal society has yet to be built – one which balances nicely collective well-being and individual well-being.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

I’m a storyteller who uses all of the beauty and power of cinema to tell tales of human struggles for positive social change.

The military defeat of an oppressive regime is important, but it does not answer our problems. It is where our problems begin, since social change cannot be reduced to a military solution.

But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

If we look long enough and hard enough … we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize those connections, we will begin to change the world.

If you care about real change, deep structural change, that involves politics, and all politics is friction. It takes leadership, and the willingness to create that friction, that leads to social change.

[On social change:] What I say is that if one country is annexed by another, its nationality is not changed overnight. Social processes are often very, very slow.