We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Angela DavisRead
The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Activism requires a balance between urgent action and the hope for lasting impact.
Angela Davis highlights the inherent tension that political activists face: the need to respond to immediate issues while also striving for a legacy that withstands the test of time. This duality requires not only passion and urgency but also foresight and reflection on how one's actions will resonate in the future.
Themes
ActivismPoliticsLegacyTimeTension
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of civic engagement and the need for activists to think beyond immediate issues.
More from Angela Davis
All quotes →Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.
Angela DavisRead
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.
Angela DavisRead
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.
Angela DavisRead
It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems
Angela DavisRead
Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'
Angela DavisRead
Similar quotes
Governments don't control people like they used to.
Noam ChomskyRead
We do not want to see a Hong Kong that enjoys freedoms on paper but whose autonomous status conceals the workings of a totalitarian state.
Joshua WongRead
It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
George F. KennanRead
China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one... If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.
Deng XiaopingRead
Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
Margaret MacmillanRead
You will find that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time. You may not like getting money from one source and spending it for another. But the thing for the school people to do is that if the politicians are going to steal, make them steal for the schools.
Huey LongRead