Agitate Quotes

• Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.

  Robert Peel

  Law, Mold, Agitation

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• Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.

  Frederick Douglass

  Philosophy, Struggle, August

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.367, Chicago Review Press

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• It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

  Lord Byron

  Time, Giving, Agitation

  "Poet of all the passions" by Fiona MacCarthy, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2002.

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• Minds that are ill at ease are agitated by both hope and fear.

  Ovid

  Fear, Psychology, Mind

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• Pour some water into a tub and stir it up. Now try as hard as you can to calm the water with your hands; you will succeed in agitating it further. Let it stand undisturbed a while, and it will calm down by itself. The human brain works much the same way.

  Koichi Tohei

  Art, Philosophy, Hands

  56 Copy quote

• My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread; I'm selling yeast.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  People, Yeast, Bread

  26 Copy quote

• Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

  George Washington

  Wise, Party, Government

  George Washington’s "Farewell Address", oll.libertyfund.org. September 19, 1796.

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• The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

  Samuel Johnson

  Retirement, Theatre, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The works of Samuel Johnson [ed. by F.P. Walesby].”, p.222

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• Unless the poor of the world agitate for themselves to be heard, there will be no changes in their circumstances.

  Vandana Shiva

  World, Poor, Circumstances

  "Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability And Peace". Book by Vandana Shiva, 2005.

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• Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation - the one is life, the other death.

  Ernestine Rose

  Opposites, Atheism, Agitation

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• Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Education, War, Cry

  Lynn Sherr, Susan B. Anthony (1995). “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words”, Crown

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• It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Mind, Depth, Movement

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.273, Stanford University Press

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• Death, my son, is a good thing for all men; it is the night for this worried day that we call life. It is in the sleep of death that finds rest for eternity the sickness, pain, desperation, and the fears that agitate, without end, we unhappy living souls.

  Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

  Pain, Sleep, Son

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• By silencing the mind, we can experience real peace. As long as various kinds of thoughts agitate the brain, we don't experience 100 percent peace.

  Henepola Gunaratana

  Real, Long, Brain

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• The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Vanity, Sometimes

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• Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.

  Criss Jami

  Hate, Men, Differences

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.113, Criss Jami

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• The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose ... We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Communication, Men, Sea

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• Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

  Sylvia Plath

  Heart, Clouds, Faces

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel: The Restored Edition”, p.35, Faber & Faber

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• I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.

  William Cobbett

  Agitation, Stomach, Fellows

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• An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Clouds, Gambling, Envy

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• Capitalism is a powerful producer of output, crisis-mongering on the left notwithstanding, and this too makes the system seem to have a lot of promise. This is why it is so important to agitate against the system in good times and bad. We can't depend on some super crisis to get folks thinking but instead have to focus on all of the contradictions of the system which cannot be ultimately resolved by it.

  Michael Yates

  Powerful, Thinking, Focus

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us
  by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country
  during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to
  that all personal and local considerations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Sacrifice, Safety

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Pay attention to the things that agitate you. It will tell you a lot about yourself.

  Terry McMillan

  Attention, Pay, About Yourself

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• It is not the lefty ass-kissers you have to agitate, but the objective left-wing...

  Gudrun Ensslin

  Wings, Lefties, Ass

  "A Terrorist Call for 'Building a Red Army'". germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org. June 5, 1970.

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• Perhaps one reason that many working parents do not agitate for collective reform, such as more governmental or corporate child care, is that the parents fear, deep down, that to share responsibility for child rearing is to abdicate it.

  Faye J Crosby

  Children, Responsibility, Working Parents

  Faye J. Crosby (1993). “Juggling: the unexpected advantages of balancing career and home for women and their families”, Touchstone

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