Quotes About Dissent

We cannot respect something just because millions or billions believe in it! We can respect something only if it is complying with the high intelligence and ethics!

The ultimate problem of utopian logic begins with a utilitarian calculus in which everyone will live in perfect harmony once we get rid of any dissenters who don't see as clearly as the collective.

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

There are people who walk mules and people walk horses, but I never thought there were people who walk cops.

It is also why there is so little tolerance for substantive dis- sent, or fundamental critique, in America. Since our identity is in fact quite brittle, we have to be constantly telling ourselves how fabulous we are.

I don't think fascism is dying for.

Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated from the Boston congregation and expelled from the Bay Colony in 1638 for refusing to bend to the authority of the town fathers.

Jack Reed, whom The New York Times had labeled "the Bolshevik agitator," hesitated and then equivocated on the stand. But by then the defense of The Masses was plain: criticism of the government didn't amount to a desire to overthrow it. If all hostile opinion were suppressed, how could Americans believe they lived in a free country? Dissent was a safeguard to freedom, not an impediment.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted, but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent.

the freedom of the individual consciousness to doubt, question, dissent, argue, or search for a private path to truth...

The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. —D. H. Lawrence,

The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.

peaceful civil disobedience can work in oppressive societies that nevertheless allow protesters to protest.

Heresy though that might be.

one group's resistance fighter is another group's rogue.

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.

Aconteça o que acontecer, continuaremos sendo uma pequena dor de cabeça sempre que cheguemos até esta Assembléia ou a qualquer outra, porque estamos dispostos a chamar as coisas pelos seus devidos nomes e a dizer que os representantes dos Estados Unidos são os agentes da repressão no mundo inteiro.

There are always people in any group who will go along with authority only so long as authority agrees with their opinions," Papa said.

Suppressing the knowledge produced by any oppressed group makes it easier for dominant groups to rule because the seeming absence of dissent suggests that subordinate groups willingly collaborate in their own victimization. Maintaining the invisibility of Black women and our ideas not only in the United States, but in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and other places where Black women now live, has been critical in maintaining social inequalities.

The other argument [about the Iraq War] was about argument itself. It characterized any argument about policy (whether, in fact, Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and whether regime change could be effected through an invasion) as unnecessary, dithering, disloyal, and possibly even deliberately evil, since the correct course of action was so obvious. Major media outlets demonized dissent. In a democracy.

Hmm," Mistress Coyle hmms.

Il y a peu de choses aussi répugnantes qu'une obéissance aveugle.