Rose Macaulay Quotes

Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people.

I think we have to talk about educating the people for critical consciousness about what anarchy is.

I don't think all people yearn for freedom, actually. I think they yearn for stability.

Any individual can contribute its own belief. And our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don't act, then the result is very clear. So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.

People need to dance. I'd say dance at least twice a day. That's how to get your energy up and how you keep you revolutionary spirit going. It's Emma Goldman who said, "Any revolution where I can't dance is not my revolution." I think that's the revolution we want.

I feel that it's very important for young people to have a sense of history and do research and don't re-invent the wheel and don't think that you're the first martyr to discover social injustice but to take advantage of previous generations of activists and find out what they did and how they resolved things.

History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

People can get crazier as they get older. I can just be weird whenever I want, and there's the freedom of not caring what people think.

I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.

I think the American people recognize that the world has shrunk. That it's interconnected. That you're not going to put that genie back in the bottle.

Dancing allows me to go away and not have to think of what I’m doing next. That is the opportunity for me to really escape. I like to say I have a good sense of judgment, but I know that not everybody does. The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve learned that I have to open myself up to all opportunities. Maybe I’ll get burned and not meet the right people, but I won’t know until I do it.

Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn't perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America's ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there's always going to be a backlash within a movement every time. When I think about race, there were a lot of pockets of people that were still living in fear under the Obama administration, but we were in this blissful celebration mode. Now we are constantly reminded that, although there are lots of good people in the world, there are just as many horrible people.

One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail.

The advice that I wish I would have given myself is to not care about what other people are thinking.

You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach back into the tradition. Western tradition is not as impoverished as a lot of people would like to think, but you'd have to go back before the industrial revolution; you may have to go back farther than that. Of course, the Bible has a perfectly adequate language, but it's suffered a lot of thoughtless wear.

When people made up their minds that they wanted to be free and took action, then there was a change.

In death, you once more challenge people from every strata, religion, and position to think about how their own actions do and can change the world for better or worse.

People are fed up - and I think quite rightfully so. But what are they proposing as an alternative to just being upset or feeling disillusioned or abandoned? That kind of protest movement really needs to happen on a much bigger scale, but there needs to be a clearer message.

Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.

I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence.

When I'm improvising, I'm out of my head. I've done a lot of projects recently where there hasn't been a script. It's all been based on outlines. At first, that's terrifying, just because you don't have the words in front of you and you don't know how it's going to come out, but that's what's really exciting about it. You don't know what's going to happen. It really forces you to listen to the other people, and I think the most natural acting comes out of that.

I realized that women are still not seen as equal to men. We had a big wave of feminism just before my generation was born. We're still sitting on this wave. There are very militant people and very aggressive women at the top of that wave but I think we have a new version of it now.

I think the world is changing. And it's changing so fast that people have to change with it.