Dissent Quotes - Page 7

• Well, dissent is the tradition in America, and I've been on the side of dissent a good bit of my career, particularly in the last many years of the Republican Congress.

  Lloyd Doggett

  Years, Careers, America

  "Interview with Rep. Lloyd Doggett". "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, www.realclearpolitics.com. August 6, 2009.

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• Kaka beat Fletcher to the ball, and headed it past Heinze as the Argentine sought to close him down. Heinze could still have dealt with the problem, but, inexplicably, Patrice Evra came flying in like a runaway TGV. Heinze was flattened, Fletcher was so shocked that he stopped to rubber-neck, and Kaka strolled on and rolled the ball past Van der Sar. Evra's nightmare of a half continued when he crazily got himself cautioned for dissent, so removing Ferguson's one remaining first-choice defender from the away leg. Madness.

  Henry Winter

  Soccer, Football, Past

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• Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

  Bertrand Russell

  Intelligent, Agreement, Pleasure

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.554, Routledge

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• Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.

  Bruce Schneier

  People, Important, Needs

  "Status Report: The Dishonest Minority". www.schneier.com. May 9, 2011.

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• What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Deception, Needs, Irreverence

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• You have, which is a rare thing, the ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself. To at least give it the floor. Because it is the key, not only to consciousness, but to real growth.

  Joss Whedon

  Responsibility

  Wesleyan Commencement Speech, genius.com. 2013.

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• Some suggested over the weekend that it is wrong to expect Elian Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami.

  Katie Couric

  Weekend, Expression, Talking

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• Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.

  Jonah Goldberg

  The End Of The Day, Likes, Puppy

  "Cynthia McKinney’s Last Stand" by Jonah Goldberg, October 29, 2001.

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• The use of 'conspiracy theory' as a derogatory - as an epithet almost - is something the propagandists have perfected over the decades, and it's a useful tool for eliminating articulate dissent and other points of view, and information that might be inconvenient for a policy agenda.

  Chris Sanders

  Views, Use, Agendas

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• I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Government, Way, Treats

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• True poetry ought to be secret and clandestine, concealed like a prohibited voice of dissent, while at the same time it should speak to everyone.

  Claudio Magris

  Voice, Secret, Speak

  Claudio Magris (2001). “Danube”, Vintage

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• Reading the [The Verso Book of Dissent] is like encountering the best version of our angry selves.

  Jonathan Messinger

  Book, Reading, Self

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• It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil -- far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word human disappears from the race.

  Jill Tweedie

  Thinking, Race, Issues

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• Anytime that knowledge and a version of the truth are considered to be absolute, fundamentalism is the result, whether the arena is Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religious faith, as well as atheism, conservative or liberal political views, even evolution or intelligent design. Anytime our minds are closed and there is no room for dissent, we are on a slippery slope towards stagnation.

  Carlton Pearson

  Religious, Intelligent, Views

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• You must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9/11, is a traitor. Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less.

  Bill O'Reilly

  War, Iraq, Differences

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• And here and now we must insist again that fidelity, honor, and love of country demand untrammeled debate and open dissent. At no time is that truer than in the midst of a war rooted in deceit and justified by continuing deception.

  John F. Kerry

  Country, War, Honor

  "John Kerry Gets His Voice Back" by James Boyce, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 23, 2006.

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• These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.

  William O. Douglas

  Creativity, Self Confidence, Government

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• Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Practice, Ideas

  John Stuart Mill (1864). “On Liberty”, p.13

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• By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.

  Todd Akin

  Government, Self, Political

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• It is necessary to ensure that the requirement to combat terrorism is not used to clamp down on freedom of expression, legitimate dissent, freedom of association and so on.

  Mary Robinson

  Expression, Association, Requirements

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• I find myself frequently placed where I
  dare give neither assent nor dissent to propositions that are submitted to me;
  for there is danger that any words I may speak shall be reported as something
  that the Lord has given me. It is not always safe for me to express my own
  judgment; for sometimes when someone wishes to carry out his own purpose,
  he will regard any favorable word I may speak as special light from the Lord

  Ellen G. White

  Light, Giving, Special

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• During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason.

  Monica Crowley

  Two, White, House

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• No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Numbers, Government, Long

  Benjamin Disraeli (1870). “Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales”, p.65

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• Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Cancer, Latin, Mean

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• Liberation movements - operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially - thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.

  Bill Keller

  Discipline, Movement, Deviation

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