The Roots of Resistance Quotes

“Roots, he wrote, symbolize more than underground strong-arms. Roots are also origins, the tendrils of a sprouting seed that give rise to life.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“This world does not grow from violent roots. It flowers from the seeds of love and respect planted in our hearts. It arises in people who hold the dignity of others in equal measure to their determination for justice. It emerges in the hearts of those who remember that the greatest courage is to move from love instead of hate.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Without Love, humanity dies of thirst, grasps at riches, destroys the earth through insatiable greed. Without Love, we are walking dust, dead matter stumbling from the dawn of birth to the dusk of death. Without Love, our Earth is stripped of beingness, left barren and lifeless, a pile of rocks and resources, objects to possess and control. Without Love, humanity sleepwalks as automatons, controlled, manipulated, and shoved through a nightmarish existence.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“People don't move into action because of statistics. They move because of their hearts. We're hardwired with empathy neurons, billions of them, and human beings are evolutionarily programmed to help one another.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“nonviolent action succeeds twice as often as violent means, in a third of the amount of time, and with a fraction of the casualties.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Resistance is more than a battle; it is the indomitable presence of life against forces of destruction.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We should be able to stand up for our ideals and not get struck down. We should be able to protest in our streets without the need for armed protection. A world of life, liberty, and love should be allowed to blossom in our towns and cities.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We are the true roots of resistance, they declared, and the scraggly leaves, golden flowers, and windborne seeds.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“All that is needed is to listen. The love song of the world enters our souls through the language of life. Our touchstone of strength forms the shape of our beloveds. Courage surges into our limbs. We rise. One foot steps in the direction of change. This is the Love that thrusts the world through eternity and carries us forward into the infinity of tomorrow. It sings overhead, scouring the barriers of reality, looking for an opening.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We shoulder the unbearable, accomplish the impossible, and endure the unthinkable by the intensity of our love.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Life wants to live, but more than that, it wants to love.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“nonviolence worked not because it melted the heart of the oppressor, but because people seized their social, political, and economic power, and refused to let business-as-usual continue until their demands were met.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Resistance is singing your grandmother's songs so the next generation will know them.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Respecting the humanity of our opposition - who are our fellow citizens whether we approve of their actions or not - requires a depth of fearlessness far beyond the tactics of dehumanization and attacking.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“For the love of one person, we can find the strength to love the whole world.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Love demanded this of everyone. To care, not just about one person, but about the whole world. To work for justice, not just for those we know, but for everyone we don't. To keep not just our loved ones safe, but also keep the beloveds of strangers safe. To treat others with as much dignity and respect as we ourselves wish to be treated.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“What is a movement, after all, but the embodiment of aspirations turned into organized action by thousands and millions of people?”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“With Love, the pivot of change emerges, the lever stretches long enough to move the world, the arc of the universe bends toward justice, the spirit of humanity soars, and the flood of life revives.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“The strength of a movement also relied on participation. Nonviolent campaigns succeeded or failed by the numbers of people willing to get in the way of injustice, or withdraw support from tyrants, or put their hands on the freedom plow and sow the seeds of change.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Democracy wasn't a set of dry documents nicely laid out on office stationary - it brimmed in the lips of thousands of souls and debated in dozens of accents as it crossed the street from one neighborhood to the next. It was the smell of stale coffee and bodies packed into an old community center. It was the typos in the fliers. It was exasperation, realization, illumination - a knockdown, drag out, sweaty, tearful, impassioned process of people making decisions together.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Every human had the seed of rebellion hardwired into their heart. Squeeze the shell of conformity hard enough and it cracks, allowing the spirit of resistance to burst forth.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“nation's water resources using the same ideas. Will found it ironic that police, soldiers, the National Guard, and private security could all be mobilized to protect the profits of corporations, but the people couldn't call upon them to protect the water or the land.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“86%
if the powerful outlaw life; if they ban love, if they constrict liberty with unjust laws . . . then the dandelions must leap up in defiance, in numbers too vast to suppress, with persistence too determined to stop. And why should they wait for violent means to achieve such a goal, when they could embody that world today?”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“we have responsibilities that are bigger than us, larger than our sorrow and grief. They can be a balm to our hearts. Purpose goes a long way when the journey seems unbearable.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“When charisma and intelligence joined hands with compassion, the result was dangerous to greed, destruction, and cruelty.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -