Social Movement Quotes & Sayings

Still, there is space for this secular movement that has become frustrated with the liberal experience. In my opinion, there is a need for an effort that helps he establishment of social justice while taking into consideration all the qualifications and reservations against the welfare state. — Samir Kassir

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. — Winston Churchill

Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude - even dishonor and betrayal- to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self effacement, surrender to the "others", disavowal of any personal dignity and freedom-on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces. — Ernest Becker

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor. — A. Philip Randolph

Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature. — Marcus Aurelius

Come on guys, let's be serious. If you really want to do something, don't just 'like' this post. Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something" [Mustafa Nayyem quoted in Chrystia Freeland, "Euromaidan, Kiev: A Place Becomes A Movement"]. — Catie Marron

Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change. — Jerry Brown

What prompts so many commentators to speak of the 'end of
history', of post-modernity, 'second modernity' and 'surmodernity',
or otherwise to articulate the intuition of a radical change in the
arrangement of human cohabitation and in social conditions under
which life-politics is nowadays conducted, is the fact that the long
effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its
'natural limit' . — Zygmunt Bauman

The "environmental movement" is becoming an economic movement, is joining the social justice movement, is becoming a sustainability movement. It's leaving behind the "People's Needs versus Nature's Needs" conflict in favor of making the case for environmental health as the essential underpinning of prosperous and stable human civilization. — Edward Norton

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) — Brian McLaren

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist. — Jonah Goldberg

It's a bit odd that nobody seems to be using the correct technical term to describe organized Islamic terrorists. They are not a faction of a religion or a social movement. They are a cult. A suicide cult. — Craig Bruce

Many folks have asked me, 'How do you do it and why have you sacrificed so much to do this work?' The answer comes easy. I look at my daughter and find hope in that she is living in a world of struggle, of social and political movement. She and the other five-year-olds will grow up in a more just, more equitable world. She motivates me. — Lateefah Simon

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers ... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. — Samuel Gompers

Far from being marginalized, as is presently the case, nineteenth-century freethought was a social movement at the core of our national life. — Fred Whitehead

Skousen's movement (it changed its name from the Freemen Institute to the National Center for Constitutional Studies after militia groups began to use the "freemen" label) persisted. Skousen, claiming to represent the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, called for the abolition of Social Security, farm subsidies, and education and welfare funding; pulling out of the United Nations; and eliminating federal income taxes and most federal regulatory agencies. Skousen's ideas might have died with him, but all that changed when Beck turned The 5,000 Year Leap into his manifesto. Skousen, — Dana Milbank

Social movement in this country has come when people get together,' said Carol Sutton of Norwalk, Conn., the president of a teachers union. It begins in the streets.' Climate marches — Anonymous

Kennedy saw the insurgency as a anti-colonial, essentially nationalist movement, feeding on social discontent. So you don't shoot people. — Roger Hilsman

If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the "Negro" has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death. — Frank B. Wilderson III

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label. — Barack Obama

Nature as a means of reproduction is important for these intellectual workers because the specialisation and one-sidedness of their work generates psychological instability and requires periods of complete relaxation without jarring sensorial stimuli (noise, media, social contacts). Nature is the most efficient compensation for intellectual stress since it represents the unity of body and mind against the capitalist division of labour. Extensive consumption of nature has traditionally been an element of the re-production of intellectual workers. (It started with Rousseau, then came the Romantics, Thoreau, the early tourists, Tolstoi, artists' colonies in the Alps, etc). The ecological movement responds directly to the class interests of the intellectual sector of the proletariat and the struggle against nuclear power plants is a mere extension of this struggle. — Anonymous

Today social justice represents one of the most serious challenges to the conscience of the world. The abyss between those who are within the world 'order' and those who are excluded is widening day by day. The use of leading-edge technologies has made it possible to accumulate wealth in a way that is fantastic but perverse because it is unjustly distributed. Twenty-percent of humankind control eighty percent of all means of life. That fact creates a dangerous imbalance in the movement of history. — Leonardo Boff

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change. — Gloria Steinem

The United States is primarily a guilt-based culture. The dominant method of social control in this country involves teaching people to feel guilt about not living up to personal expectations. Contrast this with shame-based cultures like Japan. As researchers Ying Wong and Jeanne Tsai explain in their paper, Cultural Models of Shame and Guilt, shame is "associated with the fear of exposing one's defective self to others. Guilt, on the other hand, is associated with the fear of not living up to one's own standards." In this formulation, guilt is based on failing to achieve personal ideals; shame is based on social exposure ["The Anti-Vaccine Movement Should Be Ridiculed, Because Shame Works," Gizmodo, February 6, 2015]. — Matt Novak

This kind of compartmentalizing - separating one's livelihood from one's social aspirations - is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It's almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other. — David Byrne

The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic. — Bell Hooks

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. — Richard Stallman

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence. — Ellen Willis

That Newton shuddered now [at slavery] is a testimony to they way a strong social movement can awaken a conscience.. — Adam Hochschild

Storytelling may be what most distinguishes social movements from interest groups. — Marshall Ganz

When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years - which are the gay movement and the women's movement - I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those. — Bill Condon

The future is a process, not a destination. Richard Stallman is a guy my age. I sympathize with Richard rather more than I sympathize with Richard's open-source ideas, but the guy's a mortal human being and so is his social movement. Open-source is a means of production. — Bruce Sterling

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

We should be active leaders in the fight for civil liberties which adequately reflect present social realities. Furthermore the left as a movement must appropriate the green agenda. Sustainability has to become the foundation of all our pursuits. This movement is my dream and vision. The left remains strong in Malta, but stronger it will become if we have the courage to unite and dream. — Joseph Muscat

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. — Dolores Huerta

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair. — John Ralston Saul

You know there's always prejudice in a revolutionary movement. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The great shift ... is the movement away from the value-laden languages of ... the "humanities," and toward the ostensibly value-neutral languages of the "sciences." This attempt to escape from, or to deny, valuation is ... especially important in psychology ... and the so-called social sciences. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that the specialized languages of these disciplines serve virtually no other purpose than to conceal valuation behind an ostensibly scientific and therefore nonvaluational semantic screen. — Thomas Szasz

When it comes to dealing with a social movement, society has only two options: either it can address the members' grievances, thereby making the movement irrelevant, or it can deflect those grievances and further radicalise the movement. Or as Sidney Tarrow puts it, "actions that begin in the streets [can be] resolved in the halls of government or by the bayonets of the army. — Reza Aslan

In the early 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a revitalized contemporary Chinese art world that began as a reaction against the government-approved Social Realist style. Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yong Ping, Ai WeiWei, Yue Minjun, and Wang Guangyi were among the first group of artists to establish a movement that became known as Cynical Realism. — Arne Glimcher

The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things ... They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. — Karl Marx

Postmodernism came nowhere close in quality to Modernism at its apogee, not least because that later style wholly lacked the social impetus that animated the designs most emblematic of the Modern Movement. — Martin Filler

To a man with an internet connection, every thought and every movement sounds like a tweet or status update. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I am the CEO and co-founder of Purpose - a social movement incubator and agency. We work on ways to help millions of people combine their power as citizens, consumers and cultural agents. — Jeremy Heimans

A movement starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between close acquaintances. It grows because of the habits of a community, and the weak ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together. And it endures because a movement's leaders give participants new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership. — Charles Duhigg

Women's liberation, if not the most extreme then certainly the most influential neo-Marxist movement in America, has done to the American home what communism did to the Russian economy, and most of the ruin is irreversible. By defining relations between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of reciprocity and cooperation, the movement tore apart the most basic and fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social institutions draw their strength. — Ruth Wisse

We are not a religious tradition with a creed, but a religious movement that has always wedded social justice work to theology — James Luther Adams

History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements. — Leo Tolstoy

In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status ... Now imagine yourself happily moving around your two-dimensional social world, a flat land where the X axis is closeness and the Y axis is hierarchy. Then one day, you see a person do something extraordinary, or you have an overwhelming experience of natural beauty , and you feel lifted "up." But it is not the "up" of hierarchy, it's some other kind of elevation. This chapter is about that vertical movement. My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call "divinity. — Jonathan Haidt

I feel very strongly that the Democratic Party has, in the past, been the party of the future. I think when you look at Social Security and Medicare, when you look at the civil rights movement, the women's movement, I think the Democratic Party has always been in the forefront of change. — Richard Lamm

I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement. — Niall Ferguson

Even if it's a "talking head documentary" about a social movement or something along those lines, I've always thought of editing the timing and the sense of the piece for the theatrical experience. — Robert Greene

The viral power of online media has proven how fast creative ideas can be spread and adopted, using tools like cellphones, digital cameras, micro-credit, mobile banking, Facebook, and Twitter. A perfect example? The way the Green Movement in Iran caught fire thanks to social media. — Tina Brown

Modulation and processing of the range of sensory experiences allows for social engagement and attachment to others. A person who is easily overwhelmed by sounds, touch, movement, or visual stimulation may avoid interactions with
persons or situations that are highly stimulating. In contrast, the person who does not process sensory input unless it is very intense may develop a pattern of thrill seeking, high stimulation, and risky behavior. — Georgia A. Degangi

In its rational form [dialectic] is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. — Karl Marx

There's no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there's no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can't solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender. — Betty Friedan

When anxiety about the course of a new cultural movement or political controversy arose, the average American did not have far to go to find a handy historical parallel to express quickly and completely the nature of his fears. If the concern threatened his sense of himself as part of a new nation that was moving forward, the metaphor of Salem witchcraft functioned well as a universally familiar shorthand for the social and political costs of sliding backward into a colonial world of irrationality, tyranny, and superstition. — Gretchen A. Adams

Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism. — Neale Donald Walsch

In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious political movement for social equality. It is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: the overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex - a system consolidated over thousands of years, lending the archetypal male and female roles and undeserved legitimacy and seeming permanence. — Shulamith Firestone

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human ... We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom. — Albert Schweitzer

Social Darwinism had continued to flourish in German. Together with Mendelian genetics, it was widely thought to provide a scientific basis for the eugenic 'Racial Hygiene' movement. — Jonathan Glover

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change. — Margaret Mead

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. — Errico Malatesta

Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics. — Kenneth D. Wald

I think it's very important to invite and encourage people to talk about climate change who have a lay understanding. In general, there is a lot of confusion among climate activists about the role of science, that scientists should be social and political leaders of this movement. — Margaret D. Klein

The "social justice" movement is not at all about social justice, but about relentlessly bullying anyone who does not subscribe to their Stalinist ideology. — Joshua Goldberg

'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq,' by Hanna Batatu. Few may wish to take on this massive, obscure work, but it changed my life, and I love it. — Adam Davidson

As a political movement, feminism seeks to transform society by challenging and changing social institutions. Religion, on the other hand, seeks first to transform individuals through a personal relationship with God, which then results in a desire to work for the transformation of society. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement. — James T. Walsh

It may seem somewhat ironic that the Catholic Church finds itself advocating the same position against abortion as its severest Christian critics, the Protestant fundamentalists. In fact, it is no more surprising than finding the so-called pro-life movement keeping company with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, all of whom at one time or another banned abortions. What they have in common is their belief, rooted in misogyny, that the woman's right to choose - a fundamental aspect of her autonomy - must be crushed in order to achieve what they have deemed a 'higher' religious, moral or social goal. — Jack Holland

The repeated claim before the 'seizure of power' - that the NSDAP, as a national social-revolutionary movement, and not simply another political party ... would create new bonds of unity through its elimination and transcending of the party system, was highly attractive and conveyed much of Nazism's dynamic appeal. — Ian Kershaw

For me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform. — Vivian Gornick

Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future ... Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands. — Susan Griffin

Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn't matter who is in office. — Howard Zinn

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious. — Toni Morrison

While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation. — L. Susan Brown

We supported the cooperative movement among farmers. The movement was still young and stubbornly opposed to the commercial distributors. I believed it to be one of the most helpful undertakings, for according to my social theories any organization run by citizens for their own welfare is preferable to the same action by the government. — Herbert Hoover

The conservative does not defend the Old Regime; he speaks on behalf of old regimes - in the family, the factory, the field. There, ordinary men, and sometimes women, get to play the part of little lords and ladies, supervising their underlings as if they all belong to a feudal estate . . . The task of this type of conservatism---democratic feudalism - -becomes clear: surround these old regimes with fences and gates, protect them from meddlesome intruders like the state or a social movement, while descanting on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future. — Corey Robin

Our opposition will never understand the Democratic Party. Our Party is
to the unpracticed eyes of the old Republican Tories
a mysterious contraption that usually seems to be moving in a thousand directions. What they don't know is what hurts them. For all that movement in the Democratic Party is caused by the internal combustion of creative ferment, of ideas, of people vigorously committed to the proposition that change and social progress are not only to be desired; they are necessities of twentieth-century America. — Hubert H. Humphrey

What exactly is the new verse movement? The New Verse Movement of the 1910's was to make poetry relevant again by immersing it into the spaces, technologies, and social dynamics of the modern city.
And Now In The Present And Future ?
The New Verse Movement of the 21st Century follows these same beliefs. To somehow ignite the spark and to help make poetry relevant again in a new age of technologies (The Internet) and to support new & experimental as well as older poetic forms. The New Verse Movement of the 21st Century is all about change and free expression of the creative mind. — R.M. Engelhardt

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them. — Ferdinand Marcos

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace. — Saul Williams

Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts. — Bell Hooks

Populists of the Trump variety and the Sanders variety (who are not in fact as different as they seem) are not wrong to see these corporate cosmopolitans as members of a separate, distinct, and thriving class with economic and social interests of its own. Those interests overlap only incidentally and occasionally with those of movement conservatives - and overlap even less as the new nationalist-populist strain in the Republican party comes to dominate the debate on questions such as trade and immigration. Under attack from both the right and the left, free enterprise and free trade increasingly are ideas without a party. As William H. Whyte discovered back in 1956, the capitalists are not prepared to offer an intellectual defense of capitalism or of classical liberalism. They believe in something else: the managers' dream of command and control. — Kevin D. Williamson

There will be no equity without solidarity. There will be no justice without a social movement. — Joia Mukherjee

If the New Marketing can be characterized by just one idea, it's this: Ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual.
Social change, education, new-product launches, religious movements ... it doesn't matter, the story is the same. Movements are at the heart of change and growth. A movement - an idea that spreads with passion through a community and leads to change - is far more powerful than any advertisement ever could be.
As you consider what to do next, you're faced with a difficult choice. It's difficult because it represents giving up something you may be quite comfortable with, and it's difficult because it requires an all-or-nothing commitment. — Seth Godin

A privileging of individual rights over group goods can lead to serious problems, as we've seen with the antivaccination movement. — Emily Matchar

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. — Martin Luther King Jr.

As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments. — Joel Bakan

WHILE MUSIC alone can unlock people with parkinsonism, and movement or exercise of any kind is also beneficial, an ideal combination of music and movement is provided by dance (and dancing with a partner, or in a social setting, brings to bear other therapeutic dimensions). — Oliver Sacks

The new social question is: democracy or the rule of the financial markets. We are currently witnessing the end of an era. The neoliberal ideology has failed worldwide. The U.S. movement Occupy Wall Street is a good example of this. — Sigmar Gabriel

In some respects Abbott proved to be the id of Australia's modern conservative movement: hyper-adversarial, willing to occupy itself in opposition to whatever social issues were preoccupying the left. Owing more to American political culture than the British inheritance Abbott claimed to value, contemporary Australian conservatism makes the grave error of believing in things other than power and stability. — Peter Van Onselen

I am not saying that the Renaissance in any way was a feminist movement - hardly. But the arts flourished, and in more social settings as opposed to being confined to the church. — Kathryn Lasky

We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world - but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent - how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy? If all our friends in the peace movement or of service communities of any kind do not love and help each other, whom can we love and help? — Thich Nhat Hanh

Stock prices are likely to be among the prices that are relatively vulnerable to purely social movements because there is no accepted theory by which to understand the worth of stocks ... investors have no model or at best a very incomplete model of behavior of prices, dividend, or earnings, of speculative assets. — Robert J. Shiller

Building up an organisation is like starting a social movement. At the center of everything is the core team. I have the honor of working with some phenomenal people at Purpose who are at the top of their fields. That energy and common purpose among the team is what inspires me and where the magic happens. — Jeremy Heimans

Despite the conviction that our era is revolutionary, we must also recognize that under the appearance of movement and development we are in fact living in complete stasis. There is undoubtedly much chaos and violence, there is technical progress, there are social and political experiments. But in reality our world is static, because its structures remain absolutely fixed and its development unfolds along a completely expected rather than revolutionary path. — Jacques Ellul

Bodily agitation, then, is an enemy to the spirit. And by agitation I do not necessarily mean exercise or movement. There is all the difference in the world between agitation and work.
Work occupies the body and the mind and is necessary for the health of the spirit. Work can help us to pray and be recollected if we work properly. Agitation, however, destroys the spiritual usefulness of work and even tends to frustrate its physical and social purpose. Agitation is the useless and ill-directed action of the body. It expresses the inner confusion of a soul without peace. Work brings peace to the soul that has a semblance of order and spiritual understanding. It helps the soul to focus upon its spiritual aims and to achieve them. But the whole reason for agitation is to hide the soul from itself, to camouflage its interior conflicts and their purposelessness, and to induce a false feeling that 'we are getting somewhere'. — Thomas Merton