Quotes About Dissent

They uncritically deploy verses like Romans 13:1–2 to squash dissent ("Submit to the governing authorities, for all authority is instituted by God and anyone who opposes authority is standing against what God has established").

Intellectuals are rebels, not revolutionaries.

In the open space of democracy, we engage the qualities of inquiry, intuition, and love as we become a dynamic citizenry, unafraid to exercise our shared knowledge and power. We can dissent. We can vote. We can step forward in times of terror with a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency.

For a while, I drank the juice - I did things the way everybody else said to. I listened to their advice. But it didn't work.

Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo.

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.

You didn't have to go on location if you could just shoot down City Hall, LA.

Then we're on the same page. Same paragraph, same sentence," I snapped. "Same bloody word," he agreed flatly.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.

Impressive displays of rhetoric and linguistic force are a good way to seem important and invite a particular kind of admiration, but they tend to silence dissent and discourage deeper modes of engagement.

To hell with your courts, I know what justice is.

No doubt the odds are against dissenters in any nation's judicial system. But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it.

There's a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It's a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I'd take advantage of it while you can.

The new, wellspring of all bad dreams. Driven by a self-harming compulsion, I listen closely to analysis and dissent.

Our young people - and adults - should be aware that considerable dissent exists in the scientific world regarding the validity of molecules-to-man evolution.

Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups.

I think I've always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole 'shut up and smile' theory. I haven't ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.

If I hear someone say something, and they're 100 per cent about it, then it's almost inevitable that I'll take the opposite view. I guess I feel at odds with things like society. Absolutism is always a trigger for me.

There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war.

Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians.

The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.