Quotes About Resistance

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. When oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient justification for his acts.

I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance. I saw further that the underlying purpose of segregation was to oppress and exploit the segregated, not simply to keep them apart. Justice and equality I saw, would never come while segregation remained, because the basic purpose of segragation was to perpetuate injustice and inequality.

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference.

One old domestic, an influential matriarch to many young relatives in Montgomery, was asked by her wealthy employer, "Isn't this bus boycott terrible?" The old lady responded: "Yes, ma'am, it sure is. And I just told all my young'uns that this kind of thing is white folks' business and we just stay off the buses till they get this whole thing settled.

True nonviolent resistance is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.

When legal contests were the sole form of activity, the ordinary Negro was involved as a passive spectator. His interest was stirred, but his energies were unemployed. Mass marches transformed the common man into the star performer and engaged him in a total commitment. Yet nonviolent resistance caused no explosions of anger—it instigated no riots—it controlled anger and released it under discipline for maximum effect.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was illegal. It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

Martin Meredith

You and what army of snaggled toothed wine sots?

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

I have already thought it over,' said Rubashov. 'I reject your proposition. Logically, you may be right. But I have had enough of this kind of logic. I am tired and I don't want to play this game anymore. Be kind enough to have me taken back to my cell.

Willy Loman: I don't want change, I want Swiss cheese!

most of the time we settle for half and i like it better, even as i know how wrong he was and his death useless, i tremble for i confess that something peversley pure calls to me from his memory

Perhaps because there are those who believe that authority is all of a piece and that to challenge it anywhere is to threaten it everywhere.

The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can't get out of within.

John Proctor: I will fall like an ocean on that court!

I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not melt the resolution of the statutes.

When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now

VON BERG: No, no, I never had any interest in that direction. Slight pause. Of course, there is this resentment toward the nobility. That might explain it. LEDUC: In the Nazis? Resentment? VON BERG, surprised: Yes, certainly.

Even when a writer seems to be out of touch with the spirit of the age or voluntarily hostile to it, he will usually be found to represent either an underground current of opposition or the rising tide of tomorrow beating on the crumbling cliffs of yesterday.

The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.

There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed.

The prayer "Lead me not into temptation" means: "Let me not see who I am.