How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

“non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.”

The world we once knew is decimated. Now we have to decide what we want to create.

Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it—and all meaningful human endeavors—are dead.

Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.

When you don’t know who you are and your world has been turned upside down, you don’t want to stand out.

You cannot succeed if at some point you haven’t failed.

It’s better to face your fear than to run from it because running won’t make the problem go away.

silence is complicity.

Home. A safe place. A sanctuary. The word taps into something visceral. It means safety; no matter what we do, at home we’re accepted for who we are.

If you try to change a culture, it will fight back. You have to have the stomach for it.

When you don’t know what’s going to happen next, being vulnerable and open is the first step to bring everyone together.

“Change begins with me.”

When you try to change the system, it fights back.

When the owner of the company wants to do something you don’t, either you accept it or you leave.

Government always does better when the people are involved.

Violence has made Facebook rich.

we couldn’t stay quiet because silence is consent.

You value life most intensely when you are living with the threat of its end, and you fight every step, moment by moment, to find meaning.

So where is the outrage? Where is the resistance?

“Colonialism never died, it just moved online.”

“What gets our attention is what gives our lives meaning,”

“Where we spend our time determines what we accomplish and what we become good at.