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

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• Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn't agitate against human nature.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Understanding, Tolerance, Human Nature

  "The Voice: Fran Lebowitz". Interview with Francesco Clemente, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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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 risk is enormous to Democrats. Even talking about censure or impeachment threatens to really agitate the Republican base.

  Charlie Cook

  Talking, Risk, Agitation

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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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• Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.

  Seneca the Younger

  Rivers, Fire, Darkness

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

  Miguel de Unamuno

  People, Yeast, Bread

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• Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

  Mary Oliver

  Dream, Song, Heart

  Mary Oliver (1998). “West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Compassion brings fulfillment to the heart. Selfish desires simply agitate the heart.

  Radhanath Swami

  Selfish, Heart, Compassion

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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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• Monks congregate like dogs in a kennel,
  From contact with their superiors they acquire knowledge,
  Is one the course of the wind, is one the water of the sea?
  Is one the spark of the fire, of unrestrainable tumult?
  Monks congregate like wolves,
  From contact with their superiors they acquire knowledge.
  They know not when the deep night and dawn divide.
  Nor what is the course of the wind, or who agitates it,
  In what place it dies away, on what land it roars.

  Taliesin

  Dog, Night, Wind

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• I will not permit thirty men to travel four hundred miles to agitate a bag of wind.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Sports, Men, Wind

  On refusing permission for a team from Cornell University to visit Michigan to play a game of American football. Quoted in D Wallechinsky The People's Almanac (1975).

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• The primary and most beautiful of Nature's qualities is motion, which agitates her at all times, but this motion is simply a perpetual consequence of crimes, she conserves it by means of crimes only.

  Marquis de Sade

  Change, Beautiful, Nature

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• I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Thinking, Long, Bees

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.92, Penguin

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• I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

  Sylvia Plath

  Heart, Sleep, Dark

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

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• When you have an emotional reaction to what you see, you are judging. That is your signal that you have an issue inside of yourself - with yourself - not with the other person. If you react to evil, look inside yourself for the very thing that so agitates you, and you will find it. If it were not there, you will simply discern, act appropriately, and move on.

  Gary Zukav

  Moving, Emotional, Issues

  Gary Zukav (2007). “Soul to Soul: Communications from the Heart”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

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• And when demigods use cell phones, the signals agitate every monster within a hundred miles. It's like sending up a flare: Here I am! Please rearrange my face!

  Rick Riordan

  Phones, Cells, Here I Am

  Rick Riordan (2013). “Percy Jackson: The Complete Series”, p.984, Penguin UK

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• Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Memories, Wind

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.436, Wordsworth Editions

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• My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can loose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of reclamation of human personality.

  B. R. Ambedkar

  Spiritual, Justice, Advice

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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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• Agitate him and ascertain the pattern of his movement.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Movement

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