Quotes About Protest

When men are arrested without any legal basis and for political reasons, it's merely a routine, everyday occurrence in Russia, and hardly anyone has any sympathy.

When a people which has put up with an oppressive rule over a long period without protest suddenly finds the government relaxing its pressure, it takes up arms against it.

When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy.

In 1985, I was arrested, along with my mother and brother, Martin III, in a protest against apartheid at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

I went to a bunch of marches in New York and Washington, and you know I believe in the cause, but to march with those people takes a lot of compromise on my end.

The politicians in Washington are spending trillions of dollars of our money. When are Americans going to stand up and say enough is enough?

Now that I think about it, I was arrested in 1992. Some people may think of that as a bad thing, but I feel good about it. I chained myself to the gate of a phone book factory, a GTE factory in Los Angeles. They were using thousand-year-old trees to make phone books. I think that's a total waste of a tree.

It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in America by walking around carrying a sign. It was a great revelation. It saved me a lot of anxiety and a lot of wasted energy.

Before 1994, many South Africans used theater as a voice of protest against the government. But with the end of apartheid, like the artists who watched the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, theater had to find new voices and search for new issues.

I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.

Seeing the B-52s dropped from planes, watching the burning of civilians with Agent Orange, reading about the incarceration of Vietnamese militants in cages only big enough for tigers made me furious.

For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?

Let's face it: There are people who are extremists in every corner of society, and whatever flag they're waving is something Bad Religion has stood against.

In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?

I say if you are here illegally and are displaying and waving the Mexican flag, you should go back to Mexico and fly that flag there.

You must be bold, brave, and courageous and find a way... to get in the way.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it's peaceful, of course.

There are many ways of showing your protest and discontent without the actions of Kremlin.

We cannot have chaos reign in the streets.

We cannot expect loyalty to an unjust regime.

The thing about politicians in Britain is that they are out there, you can lobby them, get close to them, there are loads of ways you can protest against them, and booing is a pretty weak way of doing it.

I have a weak spot for late '60s-early '70s yippie paperbacks and protest manifestos. I find them at flea markets or online. One of my favorites is 'Right On,' a compendium of student protests made into this 95-cent paperback with the most amazing graphics.

When governments fail us, what else can people do except take to direct action? When corporate power can so dominate government policy-making that whole communities are placed at risk, where else can people turn?