Cecily McMillan Quotes

I think that by telling the truth and by attempting to be a good citizen, somehow I've ended up playing with fire. And that's really scary.

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.

You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders. You can't do that, and they should not be held there. They need rehabilitative therapy.

I really don't feel good about leaving my house anymore. I don't feel really good about being anywhere in New York City alone anymore.

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

I cannot speak adequately, especially considering my race and my privilege, to the violence of the NYPD or the police in racial terms. That is something that I cannot speak adequately to.

My town was all-white and shut down Section 8 housing because they didn't want black people to move into the town. And I thought that was wrong - duh.

I had a sense that my mother was struggling, when I was a kid, working twelve hour days, making $12,000 a year with two kids in a trailer park.

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.