Best 182 quotes in «protest quotes» category

During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

Eat the rich! Burn their bones to keep warm! Redistribute their stolen resources!

Either offend or represent, don’t be a spectator.

Even on this most terrible days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.

Even the tiny protests help

Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there's no fury facing it.

FLIES IN DISGUISE Tell me, Have you Really seen Flies in a child's eyes Or heard their hungry cries In the middle Of the night? Don't lie. You can protest all you want About peace And genocide, But unless you are willing To take beatings for your fights, Your display of trendy showmanship Simply ain't right. Go on, Carry your useless signs About an issue the world Already abhors, But it's TRUE Heartfelt actions That will prevent Suits and Senators From creating Any more wars.

Fourth, resistance, as it has unfolded over the centuries, has claimed a “public commons” for “we the people” to have a voice in shaping the de- fining issues in our most trying times—beyond the thirty-nine wealthy white men who signed our Constitution. This means beyond elections.

From our experience of the past and our literature of the past we have derived a naïve faith in the power of a hunger strike. But the hunger strike is a purely moral weapon. It presupposes that the jailer has not entirely lost his conscience. Or that the jailer is afraid of public opinion. Only in such circumstances can it be effective.

Het is geen roman, 't is een aanklacht!

‎God remains silent so that men and women may speak, protest, and struggle. God remains silent so that people may really become people. When God is silent and men and women cry, God cries in solidarity with them but doesn't intervene. God waits for the shouts of protest.

I have always believed there is great value in studying the flaws of mankind and men —even fictional characters. All of us are flawed. All of us are diminished by some form of prejudice and bias. If a fictional character is to be realistic, he must struggle with imperfections and weaknesses.

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something... History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.

I can only imagine that future generations will consider us to have been barbaric for our intolerance of differences.

If outrage were a sign of godliness, then the devil would be the godliest soul in Creation.

If the internet is virtual, what harm could a few bloggers typing in an unreal space do?

If you don't like something don't protest from a far. Work within it to change it. Otherwise, you'll just be one voice of many rather than a trusted voice of influence.

If you're only concerned about YOUR rights, then you haven't earned the right to be concerned.

If you stand up for your rights you’ll be criticized, put through the ringer, dragged into court, arrested, pepper sprayed, sucked into an overcomplicated, Rube Goldberg bureaucracy the mistakes of which become your mistakes and which will drive you insane with stress. Wouldn’t you rather be providing service with a smile?

I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.

I think the whole student rebellion is not really a rebellion at all....They want a certain kind of identity; they're jockeying with each other for political power in their own culture. The basis for this behavior is a desire for notoriety.

It is possible that the artists are sane and the world they are painting is crazy.

I told him that if the protesters really wanted change, they should call their senator, raise money, donate, go out canvassing. They talked about real democracy, but no one wanted to slog through legal challenges, legislation, lobbying, fielding candidates, campaigning. "Too much hard work. All the drums and chanting and meetings and speeches" -- I grabbed my phone from him, tossed it on the couch, took his hand in mine and wrestled with him, letting myself brush up against a little attack-- "they're just to make people /feel/ like something's happening

It's an insidious thing," Wanda said. "It never happens overnight. This kind of thing crept into our community a long time ago. It latched on. It fed on prejudice. Selfishness. Peoples inability to see life through someone else's eyes. And it grew, bigger and bigger, until we got to a point where some people don't even question why a cop should be allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.

It seemed to him a mistake that he strove to offer his thoughts to the world. The world could be moved by thoughts, but was it not like with the pendulum that one pushes with one’s hand out past its two rest points? The clock would certainly not be affected by what happened beyond those points, but rather only by what happened between them.

It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off.

Human rights is a numbers game. Who is going to care if only 20 people pitch for a protest?

I am a Dalit in Khairlanji. A Pandit in the Kashmir valley. A Sikh in 1984. I am from the North East of India when I am in Munirka. I am a Muslim in Gujarat; a Christian in Kandhamal. A Bihari in Maharashtra. A Delhi-wallah in Chennai. A woman in North India. A Hindi-speaker in Assam. A Tamilian in MP. A villager in a big city. A confused man in an indifferent world. We're all minorities. We all suffer; we all face discrimination. It is only us resisting this parochialism when in the position of majoritarian power that makes us human. I hope that one day, I can just be an Indian in India - only then can I be me.

I am not a lady I live in an elevator in a big department store America. “Your floor, lady?” “I don't have a floor, I live in the elevator.” “You can't just live in an elevator.” They all say that except for the man from Time magazine who acted very cool. We stop and let people into dresses, better dresses, beauty, and on the top floor, home furnishings and then the credit office, suddenly stark and no nonsense this is it. At each floor I look out at the ladies quietly becoming ladies and I say “huh” reflectively. My hair is long and wild full of little twigs and cockleburrs. I visit the floors only for water. I make my own food from the berries and frightened rabbits— I pray forgive me brother as I eat— that grow wild in the elevator. Once every three months, solstice and equinox, a cop comes and clubs me a little. The man from Time says I articulate my generation something wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop Yesterday pausing at childrens I saw another lady take off all her clothes and go to live in #7. We are waiting to fill all thirteen.

I contend that the cry of 'Black Power' is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years." — Martin Luther King, Jr., 60 Minutes Interview, 1966

I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.

If peaceful protesting really worked, the need to peacefully protest would have subsided to almost zero a long time ago! Instead, the thing that has subsided to almost zero are the number of complaints filed against police officers that are actually upheld.

If protesting, do no harm to yourself or others. Peaceful protest is more effective when creating real change. Peaceful protest wins over the hearts and minds of the majority. That majority continues to grow. It is like sunlight and water for your garden.

If you must give me a label, then label me a human being. I have no pride in being a human, though, because I have nothing to do with my becoming one. But, whereas animals don't have a rational code of ethics, I like to think I do. Which is where I am partisan. Moral partisanship is the reason for my "anger." And if I don't protest what needed to be protested, I might just as well be an animal.

I heard there was a riot.' 'There was a demonstration, which I think is different. It was peaceful until it was interrupted.' Mason seemed to be thinking hard about it. 'What sort of demonstration?' 'Hmm... A new kind. It looked poetical at first but then became rather poletical.

In protesting for your rights in any form you may, but it's only good, If they can understand your problems and feelings and not only to judge you.

I remember going on a protest when I was 14. We sat down in the city's busiest junction. We stopped all the cars until the police or some thugs dragged us away.

Isn't it strange how wise counsel can cool the hottest head? He made sense but my heart screamed protest.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

It means using such means as civil disobedience, outspoken criticism, protest, pacifism, voluntary poverty and even gentle violence if it comes to a matter of restraining some impetuous redneck.

Motorbike - Poem by Malay Roy Choudhury I am on motorbike yezdi yamaha when flanked by horizon gallop backwards through sand blizzard tinsel clouds explode at my feet without helmet and speed-split air at eighty in midsummer simoon each sound-cart recedes onrushing lorries flee in a flash No time to brood but Yes accident expected anytime may even turn into a junkheap in a drought-nursed field. Translation of Bengali original 'Motor Cycle

Most Romans believed that their system of government was the finest political invention of the human mind. Change was inconceivable. Indeed, the constitution's various parts were so mutually interdependent that reform within the rules was next to impossible. As a result, radicals found that they had little choice other than to set themselves beyond and against the law. This inflexibility had disastrous consequences as it became increasingly clear that the Roman state was incapable of responding adequately to the challenges it faced. Political debate became polarized into bitter conflicts, with radical outsiders trying to press change on conservative insiders who, in the teeth of all the evidence, believed that all was for the best under the best of all possible constitutions (16).

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to thèguilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper in Ruleville, Mississippi, became legendary as organizer and speaker. She sang hymns; she walked picket lines with her familiar limp (as a child she contracted polio). She roused people to excitement at mass meetings: "I'm sick an' tired o' bein' sick an' tired!

Much protest is naïve; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

My fault started two decades ago, the first time I didn't vote, the umpteen times I told Jackie I was too busy to go on one of her marches or make posters or call my congressmen.

Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.

Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?