WIST Quotations

Banksy -- Wall and Piece, Introduction (2005)

Dave — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:30:10 +0000

The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl their giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you’re never allowed to answer back. Well, they started this fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back.

Banksy (b. 1974?) England-based pseudonymous street artist, political activist, film director
Wall and Piece, Introduction (2005)
(Source)

King, Martin Luther -- “Rediscovering Lost Values,” sermon, Second Baptist Church, Detroit (28 Feb 1954)

Dave — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:42:06 +0000

The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Rediscovering Lost Values,” sermon, Second Baptist Church, Detroit (28 Feb 1954)
(Source)

Aaronovitch, Ben -- Moon Over Soho (2011)

Dave — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 15:38:35 +0000

There’s a particular kind of safety that comes from being on the streets where you went to school, had your first snog, or drink, or threw up your first chicken vindaloo.

Ben Aaronovitch (b. 1964) British author
Moon Over Soho (2011)

Roosevelt, Eleanor -- Speech, United Nations (27 Mar 1958)

Dave — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 11:52:03 +0000

Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, closes to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Speech, United Nations (27 Mar 1958)