Dissent Quotes

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Vaclav Havel: “You do not become a 'dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”

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Jim Hightower: “America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.”

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Cynthia Ozick: “We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection is taken as a full-scale revolution.”

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Madame de Stael: “Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.”

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John Stuart Mill: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

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William Ellery Channing: “The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.”

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Eleanor Holmes Norton: “The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.”

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Eleanor Roosevelt: “I have spent many years of my life in opposition and I rather like the role.”

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Charles Evan Hughes: “When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.”

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Judy Collins: “I was raised to speak out about politics and the world around me. I would do it whether I was in the public or not. It is the way I was taught. The American way.”

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Thomas Jefferson: “The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.”

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Jim Hightower: “If you don't speak out now when it matters, when would it matter for you to speak out? ”

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Margaret Chase Smith: “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought.”

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Howard Zinn: “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

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Howard Zinn: “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.”

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Howard Zinn: “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but 'who is sitting in' -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.”

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Howard Zinn: “Historically, the most terrible things -- war, genocide, and slavery -- have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

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Howard Zinn: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

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Howard Zinn: “The great danger for American democracy is not from the protesters. That democracy is too poorly realized for us to consider critics -- even rebels -- as the chief problem. Its fulfillment requires us all, living in an ossified system which sustains too much killing and too much selfishness, to join the protest.”

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John L. Lewis: “We live in a country where we're supposed to have freedom of the press and religious freedom, but I think to some degree, there's a sense of fear in America today, that if you say the wrong thing, what some people will consider what is wrong, if you step out of line, if you dissent, whether you be an entertainer, that somehow and some way this government or the forces to be will come down on you.”

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Evelyn Beatrice Hall: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire)”

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Lillian Hellman: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.” more

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James Luther Adams: “Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.”

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Elie Wiesel: “It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment”

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Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

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David Ogilvy: “Talent ... is most likely to be found among non-conformists, dissenters, and rebels.”

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William O. Douglas: “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

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Harry S Truman: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

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Florynce Kennedy: “You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun.”