“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.”

"Three Elegies for Susan Sontag", New Politics (Summer 2005), Vol. X, No. 3 http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue39/Willis39.htm
Context: Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 4: A Man of Note.
Context: This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 21

1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)
Context: The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 57.

Source: I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

Variant: There is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

BBC Newsnight Special: Christopher Hitchens, 29 November 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mynVHOUXeDE&NR=1
2010s, 2010