Junot Diaz Quotes

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

The underpinning of immigration concerns is xenophobia and racism and nationalism.

We need to believe Donald Trump when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country.

Giving people like me a green card, a passport, and a driver's license? That's not going to be the end of the immigration conversation and debate in this country. It's like saying we elected Barack Obama president, so all of the racial problems are done. Right? I mean in some ways, the immigration conversation is just starting. Which is why when we started this campaign, we didn't call it Define Immigrant, we called it Define American. That's the question. That's what's at stake.

If Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign were part of the establishment, that would be time for all of us to just quit having to work so hard and defend it and fight for it.

If there's a theme in my work, it's that I like to focus on smart people who are facing oppression and who are fighting back against it.

I don't think, if anything, I don't think it's a feeling of hopelessness that people feel. I think if they feel - if they're feeling what we're feeling, it's that this is how we fight back.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

We will fight back against attacks on Latinos, on African-Americans, on women, on Muslims, on immigrants, on disabled Americans, on everyone. Whether Donald Trump sits in a glass tower or sits in the White House, we will not give an inch on this. Not now, not ever.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.

I'm going to fight for human rights, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or vocally so that I get locked up. I can't just sit back; it's not in my nature. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it, and I won't.

I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.

My first civil disobedience arrest for social justice was in 1986 for protesting the SDI.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

I can't let time move on without fighting tooth and nail and hopefully being a part of a revolution that is positive.

And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.

Indifference is harder to fight than hostility, and there is nothing that kills an agitation like having everybody admit that it is fundamentally right.

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.

We have a tendency to sugar coat the Civil Rights movement by showing arm in arm and everyone singing 'Kumbaya'. We don't really always show the resistance from the government, the resistance from the status quo, from the majority to silence the movement.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to 'right' these 'wrongs.'

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

I'm a perpetually mad person. I hate injustice. As far as I'm concerned, I'm living to fight injustice. I'm living to fight the goddamned thing. I'm too mad to sleep.

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.

A movement that doesn't produce a backlash isn't much of a movement at all.