Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.
Interpretation
Change requires persistent effort and cannot be handed over voluntarily.
This quote emphasizes that rights and freedoms are not simply granted by those in power; rather, individuals and communities must actively struggle and advocate for their rights. It draws on the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement, illustrating that significant societal changes often come through persistent action and unwavering determination.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, a speaker might highlight this quote to emphasize the need for activism.
As the world is getting smaller, it becomes more and more important that we learn each other's dance moves, that we meet each other, we get to know each other, we are able to figure out a way to cross borders, to understand each other, to understand people's hopes and dreams, what makes them laugh and cry.
If you can laugh with somebody and relate to somebody, it becomes harder to dehumanize them. I think that most of what we are constantly bombarded with in terms of media leads you to a creation of 'the Other' and a dehumanization of 'the Other,' and it's very much an us-versus-them conversation.
Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.
The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.
It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men's attitude to women, and in women's attitude to themselves.
After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career — in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad — watching the people within those borders burn.
We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.
Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
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