Political Activists

"Although I feel more visible today, I still believe that no minority can make major change alone; when we join together we create power blocks and become a force to be reckoned with."

"A major criticism that can be levied against our movement today is our glaring failure to teach our history to those who follow, and to honor those who stood alone. I was honored to share the stage with early activists such as Morris Kight and Buffy Dunker."

"As anti-imperialists we must be prepared to destroy all imperialist governments; and we must realize that by doing this we will drastically alter the standard of living that we now enjoy. We cannot talk on one hand about making revolution in this country, yet be unwilling to give up our videotape records and recreational vehicles."

"I was also not surprised by the reactions of women following my performance in Bloomington. One woman in the stage crew ran up and exclaimed, "They're standing up; they're giving you a standing ovation." the surprise in her voice told me that she had never seen a poetry performance; she had never felt the energy reverberate through a room with the Audre Lordes, Adrienne Richs, and Judy Grahns of this world. The glow in her face also told me that she would do so in the future."

"In an interview she did with Pippa Fleming, who co-founded and served as editor for Ache: A Journal for Black Lesbians, Pat said this: “If I died tomorrow and what could be said about my life is 'yes, she wrote books and she wrote poetry and people liked it,' that would not be enough. That's not why I take the risks that I do. A woman wrote a letter to me and the most touching things she said was, 'I'm doing my work so you don't have to do it for me. What she's telling me by this is long after I'm gone, there are going to be women who will continue to do the work.""

"Both historic and prophetic, both contemporary and timelessly accessible, Pat Parker's voice will continue to influence as we all go forward into new challenges and opportunities to lead meaningful lives."

"Parker's teaching voice, while righteous and fired by outrage, was also meticulous and patient. In "For the White Person Who Wants to Be My Friend," she offers advice, basically: don't put me in a box called "black people are such and such" while at the same time, don't ever forget my vulnerability in a racist society."

"An anti-imperialist understands the exploitation of the working class, understands that in order for capitalism to function, there must be a certain percentage that is unemployed."

"In the same spirit, and always with a big grin, Pat also liked to speak of the two of us as "poet athletes;" we were proud that we had muscles as well as brains and heart. She wanted, and achieved despite her life being cut short at the age of 45, a very full life, of family, of international politics, of sports, of art, of fulfilling work, and of leadership that continues through her poetic voice."

"Man is not his race or ethnicity."

"The fight against Gender-Based Violence cannot be won by an individual or a movement that works in isolation and we all need to join hands in fighting for the rights of women and children."

"I speak to issues that people would rather not talk about and it makes them very uncomfortable."

"I would stage a nude protest by myself because it's a unique approach to addressing issues of Gender Based Violence."

"Most of my constituents were socialized to believe a woman cannot lead, meaning I have to double my efforts to lure people to my side."

"You become unstoppable when you work on things that people cant take away from you. Things like your mindset, character, personality, transparency, your entire big."

"But hey, women who make history do not succumb to societal pressure."

"Growth comes with pain."

"I've always known there was something in me about speaking on behalf of people and advocating for certain motions and things in the society."

"When you enter politics, you psychologically prepare yourself for the highs and lows but still, when bad things happen you think, "Oh my goodness...it is happening to me.""

"At the end of the day, women have the constitutional right to be at decision making tables and they should ensure that they have a voice and contribute to develop programmes and laws that benefit them."

"As women we have to fight until the decision-making-table is diverse."

"It remains a challenge for women to be active in partisan politics because the systematic challenges in our political landscape demoralize them."

"I encourage Batswana women to stop being fearful because when this nation tumbles down, we are going to struggle the most, together with our children."

"Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed. Work and work hard."

"Friendship was salvation, in this fragile world the only thing left that was not fragile. I promise you one can be drunk on friendship as well as on love."

"fear kills, and joy maintains life."

"The men over thirty round about us were afraid: for their wives and their children — these were real reasons; but also for their possessions, their position, and that is what made us angry; above all for their lives, which they clung to much more than we did to ours. We were less frightened than they were. The years ahead would prove the point. Four-fifths of the Resistance in France was the work of men less than thirty years old."

"I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads."

"It's part of the job to mythologise the experience, and you don't have to do that with this one. It's as easy as breath to talk about this one."

"If I get something wrong or if I'm late it's an act of wilfulness. This is not the case; it's disorganisation on my part."

"There have enough people who been vilified in American politics to have American villains now, but it is a very American thing, to have British villains."

"I'm good at being self-critical. I've also been told that I'm good at taking up new sports. I'm a fast learner and pick things up very quickly."

"Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated."

"If I’m playing someone who’s smart, suddenly every character I’ve played is smart. If I’m playing a bad guy, every character is a bad guy. I suppose it’s that thing where people want to see a through-line to understand you. I mean, you know, I have played pretty ordinary people too."

"Situations where what I say echoes much further than what is healthy. I would love to just have the work do the talking. We’re in positions where people ask us questions; they want to know about more than just the work. And it can go into areas where I’ve completely shot my mouth off, whether it’s too much about my private life or being too opinionated about things in the world. I think the better thing to do—I’ve learned this from people far wiser than me—is to do very good, quiet work behind closed doors."

"Everything flat lines in my brain, to be honest. I don’t think much at all. I just sit there going, “Holy s**t!” It’s very rare that you stop to look back. What I’m trying to do, all the time, whatever I’m doing, is being in that present moment. I seem to have an appetite for life and I seem to have an appetite for work, so I keep going. I don’t really look back. So, to do that is a novel experience and quite a surreal one."

"I would say in compound sense of what little I know is it’s definitely darker in tone, and in terms of advice for taking kids of a certain age, it’s going to be prohibitive for certain people of a certain age because it is scary."

"What I try to look for is something that a general audience can relate to, to have an investment in these extraordinary people who achieve extraordinary things. That’s an easy task for an actor, to humanize these incredible machines of ideas that some of these people are. It’s not always easy, but that’s the challenge, and that’s what I’ve enjoyed doing. I’m very lucky."

"It's time to start playing the smallest violin in the world for me right now. I was very lucky because I had other people's pets. I was like an uncle or godparent. You get all the benefits without any of the trauma. We had animals at school that we tended to, I don't know how they survived. I didn't go through the trauma of seeing them as babies and then going through their life cycle with them and the inevitable end. I love, love, love, love, love dogs. Cats, on the other hand... Don't ever do a film with them. They just wander around looking really unimpressed with everything. I love them, but working with them is really tough."

"You know, I’m not a fan of horror. I’m a fan of some of those films, but I’m not a fan in the sense I find it very difficult to watch them. I’m very suggestible and gullible and I buy into what I’m watching and it just haunts me for too long afterwards. It just scares me for longer than the moment in the film. I don’t really like living a life in horror or terrors, other than that in the real world without my imagination creating more. Horror is not my genre go-to. It’s not my genre go to."

"If you’re talking about playing an iconic superhero, then there’s a huge pressure that comes with the expectations of what you do with that material, even though it’s fictitious. Obviously, if it’s someone that’s real, there’s the pressures and the rightful kind of responsibility of protecting a legacy. But they’re very, very different kinds of pressures. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to do a good job."

"I was very, very into techno for a long time. That was my bag at uni. I went clubbing a lot and all sorts of nonsense ensued. Havok on a Friday was my favourite night because I just loved dancing."

"I don’t know if watching your own work is a good or bad thing. I don’t know how much I learn from it. Each individual circumstance holds its own world of singularities and peculiarities. But among that, you can go: “Oh yeah, I remember that was what I tried to do.” Sometimes it doesn’t fit with the cast or the energy of the scene or the beat of another character. But to sit down in the audience and go: “Oh my God, I think that was what I intended”, was great."

"The feeling now prevailing in the United States is marked by a growing hatred of Fascism and, above all, of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with Nazism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews, who control almost 100 percent radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible—above all religious persecution and concentration camps are exploited—this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective, since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe."

"Things like freedom and liberty and constitutional protection and unalienable rights that are beyond the scope of government. Those type of things are the only things that will help us deal with some of the division in our country."

"The police, the armed forces, the “intelligence agencies,” the courts, and so on—all this represents the dictatorship of the capitalist-imperialist system."

"We should instill in the victims of this system an attitude of despising this system and all it stands for—of recognizing that this system represents not the "wave of the future" but the dregs of the past—that it is the thing standing in the way of a much brighter future."

"This is not a revolution for revenge—the goal is not for exploited and oppressed humanity to have a chance to become exploiters and oppressors themselves—it is a communist revolution whose goal is nothing less than putting an end to all relations of exploitation and oppression, and all the degradation and destruction bound up with this, throughout the world."

"If you don't have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state."

"While determined and massive struggle needs to be waged against these inhuman actions by the U.S. (and other oppressive governments), it should be clear that there can be no solution, under the system of capitalism-imperialism, to the situation involving masses of immigrants and refugees. The only solution lies in the revolution to overthrow this system—a revolution aiming not just to abolish oppression, exploitation, poverty, and misery in one country but having as its fundamental goal the abolition of all this throughout the world, and the elimination of all borders and boundaries that erect walls between different parts of humanity."