Helen Keller

"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Martin Luther King Jr.

"Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality."

- Martin Luther King Jr., social activist and reformer

Helen Keller

"Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Victor Hugo

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake."

- Victor Hugo, poet, playwright, novelist, statesman, human rights activist

Katherine Anne Porter

"There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own."

- Katherine Anne Porter, journalist, author, activist

Mahatma Gandhi

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

- Mahatma Gandhi, activist, political and spiritual leader

Helen Keller

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Martin Luther King Jr.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

- Martin Luther King Jr., social activist and reformer

Gloria Steinem

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."

- Gloria Steinem, feminist activist and author

Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

- Mahatma Gandhi, activist, political and spiritual leader

Norman Cousins

"Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

- Norman Cousins, journalist, author, professor and activist

Mahatma Gandhi

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

- Mahatma Gandhi, activist, political and spiritual leader

Helen Keller

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Victor Hugo

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

- Victor Hugo, poet, playwright, novelist, statesman, human rights activist

Wendell Phillips

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better."

- Wendell Phillips, abolitionist and activist

Helen Keller

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Helen Keller

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."

- Helen Keller, author and activist

Mahatma Gandhi

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."

- Mahatma Gandhi, activist, political and spiritual leader

Marian Wight Edelman

"If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out."

- Marian Wright Edelman, children's rights activist

Arundhati Roy

"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

- Arundhati Roy, writer and activist