Notable Peace & Justice Activists Posters “Ru...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Muriel Rukeyser
John Ruskin

Bertram Russell

Muriel Rukeyser
b. 12-15-1913; NYC
d. 2-12-1980; NY (stroke/diabetes)

Muriel Rukeyser, whose poetry reflected her interest in “equality, feminism, social justice and Judaism”, is also remembered for her political activism that began with the Scottsboro Case and the Hawk's Nest Incident. She also opposed the Vietnam War.

• How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser

John Ruskin
b. 2-8-1819; London
d. 1-20-1900

John Ruskin is best known as an art, architecture, and social critic. His theories about social justice influenced the development of the British Labour party and of Christian socialism. Ruskin gave away most of his inheritance, founding a charity and funding housing reform.

John Ruskin quotes ~
• “A book worth reading is worth buying.”
• “An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.”
• “Civilization is the making of civil persons.”
• “Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.”
• “A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.”
• “All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.”

• Mountainous Landscape by John Ruskin
• The Seven Lamps of Architecture, John Ruskin
• Praeterita (authbiography), John Ruskin

Bertrand Russell
b. 5-18-1872; Wales
d. 2-7-1970; Wales

Social reformer and pacifist Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a philosopher, logician, mathematician, and historian. He was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought”.

Bertrand Russell quotes ~
• “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither . . . over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.”
• “A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
• “Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.”
• “If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”
• “Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
• “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

• The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

Lillian Russell
née Helen Louise Leonard
b. 12-4-1860; Clinton, IA
d. 6-2-1922; Pennsylvania

Lillian Russell, as one of the best known and popular entertainers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was the first voice to be carried over Alexander Graham Bell's long distance telephone lines - she sang in New York to audiences in Boston and Washington, D.C., May 8, 1890.

Russell was also and advocate of women's suffrage (her mother was the first woman to run for mayor of New York City), and did Marine recruitment and fundraising for the United States World War I effort.