Introduction
Here is a collection of inspiring quotes about narrative change and story telling collated by the Commons Librarians.
Please contact us if you have one to share.
Themes
Power
Narratives are about invisible power. How perceptions, belief systems and ideology shape the way people define what is “right” and what is “wrong”. – Phumi Mtetwa – Source p. 12
Narratives can mobilise and connect, as well as divide and isolate. Social, public or dominant narratives help to legitimise existing power relationships, prop them up, and make them seem natural. It’s useful to think of narratives in terms of power, because then collective action and creative collaboration are clearly the only way to go if we want to reroute or disrupt these power dynamics. – Isabel Crabtree-Condor, Source p. 9
…narrative power is not merely the presence of our issue or issue frames on the front page. Rather, it is the ability to make that presence powerful—to be about to achieve presence in a way that forced changes in decision making and in the status quo, in real, material, value-added terms. – Brett Davidson and Bisola Falola, Source, p.5
[Narrative change] is very connected with power. This work is not just about playing with language; narratives embody and justify certain power relationships. – Brett Davidson, Source p. 72
Narratives are always, always tied to power—and an important first step is to expose that power for what it is. – Brett Davidson, Source
We see narrative being used to reclaim power and create new spaces for conversation. – Isabel Crabtree-Condor, Source p.7
For me, understanding narratives and what lies behind or under them, is one way of digging more consciously into that invisible web of forces that maintain the status quo.- Isabel Crabtree-Condor, Source p. 8
Sometimes the best response to a powerful enemy is a powerful story. – Beautiful Trouble, Source
A Feeling, A Moment
I think of a narrative like a song, that leaves you with a feeling. It isn’t just a piece of news, but something that stays with you, sits in you, and makes you think. It’s pleasing. You aren’t aware that you are getting a message, but it travels through you. – Rohini Mohan, Source p. 12
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou, Source
Narratives are about confronting something that looks immoveable and all mighty, but with the right questions generating tiny holes in that thinking. Through those tiny holes, little bits of light shine through. In those are opportunities for freedom, transformation, doubt and free thinking that are needed in civil processes. – Alejandra Alayza, Source p. 12
A story communicates fear, hope, and anxiety, and because we feel it, we get the moral not just as a concept, but as a teaching of our hearts. That’s the power of story. – Marshall Ganz, When we tell a story we enable the listener to enter its time and place with us, see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. – Marshall Ganz, Source
A story is like a poem. It moves not by how long it is, nor how eloquent or complicated. It moves by offering an experience or moment through which we grasp the feeling or insight the poet communicates. – Marshall Ganz,
Simply presenting the ‘evidence’ will not bring about change. You first have to make people care about the problem. And that is what storytelling does. – Brett Davidson, Open Society Foundations, Source p.65
New Worlds, Possibilities and Alternatives
…we have to achieve a depth of narrative immersion such that people experience a fictional way of life as possible, and begin to express first yearning, then desire, and finally, demand for this fiction to be made real. – Bridgit Evans, Source
Small shifts in mindset can trigger a cascade of changes so profound that they test the limits of what seems possible. – Dr Carole Dweck, Source
Aspirational narratives can create a collective sense of investment by presenting “what could be,” creating an opening to mobilize people to work toward this different reality and overcome fatalism in the process. – Frameworks Institute, Source p. 18
I think so much of our comfort in narrative arc is around resistance, and we need to get that part of it is not being the underdog, or not just resisting, but telling the narrative arc includes what that change is or what it looks like. – Cristina Uribe, Source p. 19
Well-told stories help turn moments of great crises into moments of new beginnings. – Marshall Ganz, Source
We can’t create a world we haven’t yet imagined. Better if we’ve already tasted it.- Andrew Boyd, Source p.49
I wish, instead of looking for a message when we read a story, we could think, ‘Here’s a door opening on a new world: what will I find there? – Ursula Le Guin, Source p.42
You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world.… The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way…people look at reality, then you can change it. – James Baldwin, Source p.3
Social Change and Movements
Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they’re not just about redistributing the goods. They’re about figuring out what is good. – Marshall Ganz, Source
As a social change strategy, narrative change holds promise because it goes beyond the surface. Once we reframe issues, we change how we talk, vote, and consume in relation to those issues, and, ultimately, we can see shifts in relevant policies, norms, and rules. – Korobkova, K., Weinstein, D., Felt, L., Rosenthal, E. L., & Blakley, J., Source, p. 9
Narratives that frame individuals as alone in their problems or to blame for their circumstances prevent communities from forming bonds of solidarity, thus hindering the development of community power. – Source
Social movements are often the “crucibles” within which participants learn to tell new stories of self as we interact with other participants. – Marshall Ganz, Source
In the early days of the women’s movement, people participated in “consciousness raising” group conversations which mediated changes in their stories of self, who they were, as a woman. Stories of pain could be shared, but so could stories of hope. – Marshall Ganz, Source
Stories operate on the level at which individuals move, while narrative is the level at which societies move. – Jeff Chang, Writer & Senior Advisor, Race Forward, Source, p.20
General
Narratives permeate everything. In the groups I am connected to we don’t sit down and say ‘let’s talk about narrative’, but it is everywhere and in everything that we do. – Majandra Rodriguez Acha, Source p. 58
Narratives are made up of many stories, tweets, online content, offline conversations. They keep deeply held ideas about society and people in place, for good and bad. – Isabel Crabtree-Condor, Source
Narrative change is not about consensus on every policy detail, but rather agreement on the broad values, themes, and directions that the public discourse and public policy should take. – Alan Jones, Source
We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative. In order really to live, we make up stories about
ourselves and others, about the personal as well as the social past and future. – Barbara Hardy, Source
Narratives work to influence those invisible yet influential worlds of thoughts, feelings and attitudes. In this way, narrative becomes something of a lifeline, influencing what we believe and ultimately choose to act on. – Laura Ligouri – Source p. 12
…the question is whether we are telling good stories: stories that free the imagination, stories that put hands and feet in motion.
If we don’t tell such stories, the vacuum will surely be filled by someone else. For stories are also being told by the opponents of progress, who would have us build up walls at our borders and tear down the laws that protect our planet, our workforce, and our most vulnerable families.
It is this clash of forces that makes for struggle. Without struggle, there is no progress—and without struggle, there are also no stories. There is only stasis.
So let us plow up the ground, let us struggle on. And let the stories we tell be equal to the struggle we make for justice.- Deepak Bhargava, Source p.66
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Source p.27
The currency of story is not truth, but meaning. – Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning, Source p.9
It is not the job of a good message to say what is popular. It is the job of a good message to make popular what we need said. – Anat Shenker-Osorio in her talk “The Audacity of Audacity”, Source p. 11
The stories we tell ourselves are how we live in the world. It’s incorrect to separate the stories we tell from how we act politically. – Michael John Garcés, artistic director, Cornerstone Theater Company, Source, p.21
A narrative consists of a collection of stories which together convey a common worldview or meaning – it is a shared interpretation of the world and how it works. – (McBeth et al., 2015; Fisher 1984), Source
Narrative’s power stems from its complexity, indeed, its ambiguity… Following a story means more than listening: it means filling in the blanks, both between unfolding events and between events and the
larger point they add up to. – Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics, Source p. 23
When we write, we try to get at the truth through the lie of the story. – Laila Lalami, Source p.41
Everything we believe comes from stories we’ve been told. – Heather McGhee, Source
A story is the shortest distance between two people. – Unknown
Public narrative is a form of social reproduction in all societies, invisibly woven into the fabric of everyday life. These shared systems of meaning, mostly taken for granted and unremarked, exist as themes or stories in our consciousness. They give coherence to group experience, particularly how the world works. Expressed in legal codes, the arts, mass media, and corporate discourse, core narratives provide the necessary mental models, patterns, and beliefs to make sense of the world and explore our place within it. – Brett Davidson and Bisola Falola, Source, p.2
Explore Further
- Narrative Change: Start Here
- Narrative Power and Collective Action: Conversations with People Working to Change Narratives for Social Good
- Story of Self, Us and Now: Video Examples
- Marshall Ganz Quotes and Wisdom about Leadership, Hope, Organizing and Narrative
- A Collection of Nonviolence Quotes
- Quotes about Power and Social Change