It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

Robert F. Kennedy, Speech, South Africa, 1966.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

Frederick Douglass, “West Indian Emancipation” (August 4, 1857)

There are two kinds of restrictions upon human liberty — the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by public opinion.
Carrie Chapman Catt, in a speech at Senate hearing on Woman’s suffrage