Quotes About Protest

We are propping up a government that has overreached its bounds in the name of public safety," FM said. "The people must speak up and rise against the upper class who holds them enslaved!

One cannot write poems about trees when the forest is full of police.

The wounds and needs that lie behind the wars we condemn are the wounds and needs we share with the whole human race. We too are deeply marked by the dark forces that make one war emerge after another. We too are a part of the evil we protest against." (p.32)

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

si elle (la loi) est d'une telle nature qu'elle fasse de vous l'agent de l'injustice vis-à-vis d'autrui alors je déclare qu'il faut enfreindre la loi

It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey.

How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.

Tous les hommes reconnaissent le droit à la révolution, c'est-à-dire le droit de refuser fidélité et allégeance au gouvernement et le droit de lui résister quand sa tyrannie ou son incapacité sont notoires et intolérables.

The free men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them? Or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we have succeeded? Or shall we transgress them at once? — 1849 Essay on Civil Disobedience.

So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. It isn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye for what makes you so. Oh but you're just as bad yourself. You can't resist me when I point that out. She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. I can't indeed resist you. Then there we are! said Strether.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day?

Puissance, justice, histoire: à bas!

I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.

If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.

To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.