“We have to be able to criticize what we love,
Say what we have to say,
'Cause if you're not trying to make something better,
Then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.”

—  Ani DiFranco

What If No One's Watching
Song lyrics

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We have to be able to criticize what we love, Say what we have to say, 'Cause if you're not trying to make something …" by Ani DiFranco?
Ani DiFranco photo
Ani DiFranco 91
musician and activist 1970

Related quotes

Barack Obama photo

“You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against. That way we can have a vigorous and meaningful debate. That’s what the American people deserve. That’s what the times demand. It’s not enough anymore to just say we should just get our government out of the way and let the unfettered market take care of it -- for our experience tells us that’s just not true.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: If you still don’t like Obamacare -- and I know you don’t even though it’s built on market-based ideas of choice and competition in the private sector, then you should explain how, exactly, you’d cut costs, and cover more people, and make insurance more secure. You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against. That way we can have a vigorous and meaningful debate. That’s what the American people deserve. That’s what the times demand. It’s not enough anymore to just say we should just get our government out of the way and let the unfettered market take care of it -- for our experience tells us that’s just not true.

A.A. Milne photo
Lionel Richie photo
Bill Maher photo

“I don't hate America. I love America. I want it to be better. The only way we can get it to be better is to realistically criticize what's wrong with it.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Larry King Live interview (2010)
Context: I don't hate America. I love America. I want it to be better. The only way we can get it to be better is to realistically criticize what's wrong with it. That's not what the Republicans do. … I don't want to be a pessimist. I'm a realist. One man's realist is another man's pessimist. But, no, I'm not like Mitt Romney, whose book is called No Apology, the Case for American Greatness. Really? Always waving the big foam number one finger; we're not number one in most things. We're number one in military. We're number one in money. We're number one in fat toddlers, meth labs, and people we send to prison. We're not number one in literacy, money spent on education. We're not even number one in social mobility. Social mobility means basically the American dream, the ability of one generation to do better than the next. We're tenth. That's like Sweden coming tenth in Swedish meatballs.

Aimee Mann photo

“Soon enough
you can say we made it up
just for fun I guess
to make a mess
cause what’s more fun
than other people’s hell”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Soon Enough"
Song lyrics, Charmer (2012)

Donald J. Trump photo

“For some reason we have a certain chemistry — or whatever. Let's see what happens. We have a long way to go. But I'm in no rush... So, I just want to say that we are going to be heading out to the DMZ and it's something I planned long ago but had the idea yesterday to maybe say hello, just shake hands quickly and say hello.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

press conference, Blue House, Seoul, South Korea, quoted in * 2019-06-30

Trump: Kim and I "have a certain chemistry"

CNN

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-dmz-kim-live-intl-hnk/h_8b23e071903b007d8ff1934be8457d2c
2010s, 2019, June

John Lewis (civil rights leader) photo

“Our nation is founded on the principle that we do not have kings. We have presidents. And the Constitution is our compass. When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something. Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?'”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

For some, he concluded, this vote may be hard. But we have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history.
Source: Quoted in Impeachment is Over, But Don’t Despair by Diallo Brooks, CounterPunch https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/07/impeachment-is-over-but-dont-despair/, (7 Feb 2020)

Libba Bray photo
Henri Barbusse photo

“I dimly see that there is something more than what we have seen, than what we have said, than what we have felt to-day. One day, perhaps, she and I will exchange better and richer sayings; and so, in that day, all the sadness will be of some service.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts
Context: Among some papers on my table I see the poem again which we once found out of doors, the bit of paper escaped from the mysterious hands which wrote on it, and come to the stone seat. It ended by whispering, "Only I know the tears that brimming rise, your beauty blended with your smile to espy."
In the days of yore it had made us smile with delight. To-night there are real tears in my eyes. What is it? I dimly see that there is something more than what we have seen, than what we have said, than what we have felt to-day. One day, perhaps, she and I will exchange better and richer sayings; and so, in that day, all the sadness will be of some service.

Thomas Merton photo

“This new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of real differences, real emotional friction… The things on the surface are nothing, what is deep is the Real. We are creatures of Love. Let us therefore join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts. I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all. I have no idea what I am going to say. I am going to be silent a minute, and then I will say something…”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

'O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.'
Closing statements and prayer from an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975); quoted in Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings (1992), p. 237.

Related topics