Dissent Quotes - Page 13

• The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George... Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security.

  Ron Paul

  Kings, Safety, Brave

  "The Patriotism Smear". Ron Paul's speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, www.lewrockwell.com. May 22, 2007.

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• Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. This is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur.

  Peter Drucker

  Years, Two, Entrepreneur

  "Innovation and Entrepreneurship".

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• Silence is hereby outlawed. Silence breeds independent thought, which in turn breeds dissent.

  Frank Beddor

  Independent, Silence, Turns

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• The left’s idea of “science” is that we should all be riding bicycles and using the Clivus Multrum composting latrines instead of flush toilets. Anyone who dissents, they say — while adjusting their healing crystals for emphasis — is “afraid of science.”

  Ann Coulter

  Healing, Ideas, Riding

  "Liberals: They Blinded Us With Science". humanevents.com. March 23, 2011.

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• Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Debate, Produce, Dissension

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• The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Nice, Criticism, Used

  "Being Nice Isn’t Really So Awful" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. December 10, 2013.

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• Passionately obsessed by anything we love - an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels, rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts. Without the power of that love.

  Richard Bach

  Fear, Magic, Doubt

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• As the American Muslim community gets a little bit freer in terms of not being under the thumb of that kind of oppressive mentality, there is going to be some internal dissent. When you are consciously oppressed, you tend to sort of band together and unite because there's a necessity to do so. And that as that proceeds, some of those difference get more into the fore and I think that's the reason you are seeing some internal dissension as a byproduct of the fact that there is not this kind of immediate urgency to unify against this kind of onslaught because that onslaught is refuted.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Thinking, Community, Together

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• Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.

  Susan Sontag

  Successful, Self, Feelings

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.152, Macmillan

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• In America, religious dissent is as vital as it is elusive. Like the secretions of the pituitary, the juices of dissent are essential to ongoing life even if we do not always know precisely how, when or where they perform their tasks, and the not knowing - the flimsy, filmy elusiveness - is supremely characteristic of America's expressions of religious dissent. For in the United States no stalwart orthodoxy stands ever ready to parry the sharp thrust or clever feints of dissent.

  Edwin Gaustad

  Religious, Clever, Expression

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• Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lonely, Book, Men

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Introduction, www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

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• Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.

  Eric Hoffer

  Home, Past, People

  Eric Hoffer (1977). “In our time”, McNally & Loftin Publishers

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• In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.

  Andrew Jackson

  People, Decision, Liberty

  United States. President (1829-1837 : Jackson), Andrew Jackson (1835). “Annual Messages, Veto Messages, Proclamation, & C”, p.179

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• Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Doors, Democracy, Quiet

  Lewis H. Lapham (2004). “Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy”, p.162, Penguin

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• We, especially those of us in depoliticized and pacified societies, need to cast a colder eye at our self-perceptions, now and in the past, as sentinels and embodiments of Enlightenment virtues of reason, dissent, and skepticism.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Eye, Past, Self

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. ...And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Average, Liberty

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

  Learned Hand

  Religious, Eye, Winning

  "A Plea for the Open Mind and Free Discussion" (speech), Albany, N.Y., 24 Oct. 1952

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• There are people who've said that I'm being brave for being openly supportive of gay marriage, gay adoption... With all due respect, I humbly dissent. I am not being brave, I'm a decent human being... Love is a human experience, not a political statement

  Anne Hathaway

  Gay, Love Is, People

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• A government of, by and for the people is obligated to conduct the nation's business in a manner that respects dissent.

  Jim Leach

  Government, People, Nations

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• As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.

  Grover Cleveland

  Struggle, Views, Law

  Grover Cleveland (2006). “State of the Union Addresses”, p.254, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I'm interested in the ongoing war between the individual and community. That inner dissent against whatever group is surrounding you. No one wants to cede their selfhood to a group, right? And yet no one can exactly live outside the group, either. Even the most obstinate survivalist probably lives in some telepathic communion with all the other obstinate survivalists out there in the woods.

  Jonathan Raymond

  War, Community, Groups

  "Jon Raymond’s Californian Epic". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 1, 2017.

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• If you dissent without breaking the law then you are legitimizing the system that allows this kind of latitude. You have to break the law to touch the state.

  Philip Berrigan

  Law, Kind, Break

  Source: law-journals-books.vlex.com

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• I don't know whether God talks to him or whether he's trying to undo what his father did. But he believes in the mission. The body bags aren't going to deter him. Public dissent isn't going to deter him. He's going to go ahead. And that's more frightening.

  Seymour Hersh

  Father, Believe, Trying

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• Our politics are being hijacked by a comparatively small number of people who seek to dominate the debate by screaming the loudest. They see the world as an urgent struggle between true believers and nonbelievers. They attempt to impose strict litmus tests and insist on conformity. They demonize dissent and consider all political opponents their enemies. Fear is their favourite tactic as they try to divide and conquer

  John Avlon

  Struggle, Small Numbers, People

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• The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents. To him, as to any believer in a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is disapproved of not only intellectually but also morally. There cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been revealed.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Religious, Attitude, Errors

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.5, Routledge

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