Protest Quotes - Page 8

• Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Spiritual, Needs, Cost

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• Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman. The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.

  William O. Douglas

  Attitude, Creativity, Men

  "Points of Rebellion". Book by William O. Douglas, 1970.

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• Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it. There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.

  Bayard Rustin

  Believe, Political, Three

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• 'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s.

  Jonathan Raban

  War, Party, Race Riots

  "Sipping with the Tea Party" by Jonathan Raban, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2010.

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• The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest.

  William O. Douglas

  Use, Violence, Persuasion

  WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS (1970). “POINTS OF REBELLION”

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• The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Sex, Believe, Men

  Giacomo Leopardi, Ángel Flores (1966). “Poems and prose”

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• A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian Church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protest injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved-but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  God, Christian, Ocean

  "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Book by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Final lines, www.gutenberg.org. 1852.

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• As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind.

  William Allen White

  College, Order, Healthy

  "Student Riots", editorial in "The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette" (April 8, 1932); reported in "Forty Years on Main Street" compiled by Russell H. Fitzgibbon, (p. 331), 1937.

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• The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.

  Alfred Kazin

  Tragedy, Society, Development

  ALFRED kAZIN (1956). “ON NATIVE GROUNDS An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature”

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• Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi.

  James Hillman

  Moving, Ideas, Our World

  James Hillman (2006). “City and Soul: Uniform Edition”, Spring Publications

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• It's like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they're born.

  Chris Hadfield

  Baby, Color, Smell

  Chris Hadfield (2013). “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth”, p.170, Pan Macmillan

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• A truly English protest march would see us all chanting: 'What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!

  Kate Fox

  Want, March, Chanting

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• I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it. Martin Sheen The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Fire, Government, Long

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• I think O.J. protests too much. Not only did he say he didn't carve the holiday turkey, but he was in the back yard practicing his golf swing the whole time.

  David Letterman

  Holiday, Golf, Thinking

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• The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, 'When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of children.'

  Mitt Romney

  Teacher, Children, Attitude

  "'Who's Killing Philly Public Schools?': Daniel Denvir on Plan for School Closings, Privatization". www.truth-out.org. May 25, 2012.

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• Men would bless you or curse you;
  The curse, a protest against failure,
  The blessing, a hymn of the hunter
  Who comes back from the hills
  With provision for his mate.

  Khalil Gibran

  Blessing, Men, Hymns

  "A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward". "Jesus, The Son of Man". Book by Khalil Gibran, 1928.

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• There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs.

  Criss Jami

  Names, Differences, People

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• Others - as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders - serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few - as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men - serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Hero, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.3, Cambridge University Press

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• The people on the streets of Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and Iran have done more to defeat the ideology of Al Qaeda than anything that the United States has done. They have shown that there is a third way, that with peaceful protest you can have an end to dictatorship and a role for human dignity, a role for your religious faith in society.

  Reza Aslan

  Religious, Egypt, Iran

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.

  Albert Camus

  Life And Death, Evil, Unity

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.24, Vintage

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• The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.

  Thomas Szasz

  Suicide, Addiction, Drug

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.168, Syracuse University Press

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• When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest...are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

  Howard Zinn

  Fall, Challenges, Roles

  "Are We Politicians or Citizens?" by Howard Zinn, progressive.org. May 1, 2007.

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• In the largest sense, every work of art is protest... A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it... A hymn is a controversial song - sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out...

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Art, Years

  "Show 33 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders, Part 1". Interview on radio documentary series "Pop Chronicles", digital.library.unt.edu. February 14, 1968.

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• The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.

  George Eliot

  Stars, Night, Light

  "Golden Gleams of Thought from the Words of Leading Orators, Divines, Philosophers, Statesmen and Poets". Book by S. Pollock Linn, 1881.

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• I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Taken, Opportunity, Wish

  Address to the National Student Council, 1965.

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