Protest Quotes - Page 16

• Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of “business as usual.” That is WHY it is effective.

  Naomi Wolf

  Peaceful, Usual, Disruptive

  "The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society" by Naomi Wolf, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 20, 2011.

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• In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

  Naomi Wolf

  Government, America, Requirements

  "Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2011.

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• I'm not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I'm going to say I'm opposed to war. But I'm also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights.

  John Wooden

  War, Rights, People

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• I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.

  Nelson Mandela

  Country, Struggle, Government

  Nelson Mandela (1990). “One nation, one country”

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• Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Depression, Real, Thinking

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.172, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.

  Thom Yorke

  Usual, Records, Shallow

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• Street protests in Saudi Arabia might warm our hearts, but they could easily lead to $250 a barrel oil and a global recession.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Heart, Oil, Arabia

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• I detest symbolic protest, as it is an outcry of weak, middle-of-the-road, liberal eunuchs. If an individual feels strongly enough about something to do something about it, then he shouldn't prostitute himself by doing something symbolic. He should get out and do something real.

  William Powell

  Real, Enough, Individual

  "The Anarchist Cookbook". Book by William Powell, Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance", p. 62, 1971.

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• You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow.

  Julian Baggini

  Views, Issues, People

  "Speakers' corner" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. May 23, 2008.

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• Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Art, Years, Letters

  Letter declining Pulitzer Prize in fiction (1926)

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• Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different. It sounds simple, but too often our protests fail this test.

  Julian Baggini

  Simple, Two, Sound

  "Don't complain less - do it better" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2010.

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• Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the "demands" of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Agency, News, Movement

  "Occupy Wall Street beta tests a new way of living" by Douglas Rushkoff, www.cnn.com. October 25, 2011.

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• Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

  Neil Postman

  People, Culture, News

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.18, Penguin

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• I plan to send my liver somewhere in France, to protest foie gras (liver pate) ... I plan to have handbags made from my skin ... and an umbrella stand made from my seat.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Skins, France, Handbags

  Speaking to onMilwaukee.com, February 1, 2005.

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• I think we're going to start to see a new model of civic advocacy where people get together once in a while to protest, but it's more about an ongoing, sustained engagement in issues, networks and communities about which people care.

  Alex Steffen

  Thinking, Issues, People

  "Is the Internet the future of community?". The CNN Interview, www.cnn.com. March 11, 2008.

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• Liberals believe that crime is inextricably linked with poverty. In reality, most poor people never resort to crime, and some wealthy people commit evil acts to enrich themselves further. Harlem, East Los Angeles, the South side of Chicago are not the poorest communities in the United States. According to a new U.S. Bureau of the Census report, the poorest communities are Shannon County, South Dakota, followed by Starr, Texas, and Tunica, Mississippi. Have you ever heard of these residents rioting to protest their living conditions?

  Rush Limbaugh

  Life, Believe, Reality

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• You may even have Jews in your midst who did not learn their way of life from us, and did not inherit it from a Jewish forebear. We may have authentic gentiles in our midst: these single protests are of no account; they are extreme and irrelevant variations.

  Maurice Samuel

  Variation, May, Way

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• I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Government, Hands, Order

  "The Authority Principle" in Daniel Guerin "No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism" (p. 90), 1980.

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• A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.

  Phil Ochs

  Song, Mistake, Bullshit

  Liner notes for compilation album "The Broadside Tapes 1" by Phil Ochs, 1989.

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• The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.

  Sergei Rachmaninoff

  Heart, Thinking, Kind

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• I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I am not going to protest.

  Nelson Mandela

  Helping, Notes, Ifs

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• Jacobins, I have a truth to tell you. You do not know your most deadly enemies; they are the constitutional priests. It is they who protest most in the provinces against anarchists, disorganisers, Dantonism, Robespierrism, Jacobinism... Do not cherish any longer the popular errors; cut at the roots of superstition! Declare openly that the priests are your enemies.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Cutting, Errors, Roots

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• I protest that we fans are being emotionally starved and frustrated by long periods of perfect performance of these batteries. More over, when there are nothing but strikes and balls going on, you relapse into your worries over the Bank of England, or something else.

  Herbert Hoover

  Baseball, Perfect, Worry

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• When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

  Paul Robeson

  Song, People, Singing

  Paul Robeson, Philip Sheldon Foner (1978). “Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974”, Brunner-Routledge

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• This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Blessed, America

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.171, Atlantic Books Ltd

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