We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.
Interpretation
The birth of a revolution is marked by courageous actions against oppression that can lead to justice.
This quote by Nancy Gibbs illustrates the transformative moments in history where individuals, often in dire circumstances, take bold actions that challenge tyranny. It highlights the diverse forms of resistance and bravery, from students standing up to military power to acts of self-sacrifice, all contributing to a collective movement for justice, often emerging from chaos and destruction.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the power of activism in social movements.
Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.
Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise.
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament.
The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.
Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.
I'm going to do anything I can do - whether that's being part of FIFA or creating some sort of movement that can actually impart real equality across all lines - in every country, every city, every sector all over the world, that's what I'm going to do.
Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony.
Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.
What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.
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