Quotes of Dissent - somelinesforyou

“ In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects. ”

- J. W. Fulbright

“ No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. ”

- Barbara Ehrenreich

“ Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime. ”

- Jacob Bronowski

“ Discussion in America means dissent. ”

- James Thurber

“ In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. ”

- Learned Hand

“ Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. ”

- Robert Jackson

“ In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. ”

- James William Fulbright

“ Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. ”

- Howard Zinn

“ The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. ”

- Archibald MacLeish

“ Assent — and you are sane — , demur — you're straightway dangerous — , and handled with a Chain —. ”

- Emily Dickinson

“ I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts. ”

- Lord Byron

“ The beginning of thought is in disagreement — not only with others but also with ourselves. ”

- Eric Hoffer

“ To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs — but a tribute nevertheless. ”

- George Steiner

“ Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. ”

- Andrea Dworkin

“ A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority. ”

- Eric Hoffer

“ 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… ”

- Vaclav Havel

“ Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“ 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. ”

- John Stuart Mill

“ Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder. ”

- Eric Hoffer

“ Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man. ”

- Jacob Bronowski

“ The lady doth protest too much, methinks. ”

- William Shakespeare

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

- Cynthia Ozick

“ In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects. ”

- James William Fulbright

“ The original "crime" of "niggers" and lesbians is that they prefer themselves. ”

- Alice Walker

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

- Jim Hightower

“ 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. ”

- Judy Collins

“ 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. ”

- William Ellery Channing

“ We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion. ”

- Richard Perle

“ In the end, it is the person you become, not the things you have achieved, that is the most important. ”

- Les Brown

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

- Howard Zinn
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