Quote by Angela Davis: “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

This reverses the famous prayer about accepting what cannot be changed. Davis rejects the premise that the injustices around her are fixed and inevitable. Instead of adjusting yourself to an unjust world, she insists on working to change the world itself. The shift from acceptance to action is political as much as personal.

Davis said this in various speeches and writings during the 1970s, following her acquittal and her continued work in prison abolition activism. The United States prison system was expanding rapidly, and Davis was arguing for structural change at a time when the dominant culture counselled individual adjustment and acceptance.

American political activist, philosopher, and academic whose work addresses prison abolition, feminism, and Black liberation. A member of the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party in the 1970s, she became an international symbol of resistance after her 1972 acquittal following a high-profile political trial.