Quotes on Dissent

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

Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

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.

If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.

The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated... It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.

Technology is a tool, and it's a platform. Nobody gets arrested for being a blogger; people get arrested for dissent. Nobody gets arrested for putting information about themselves online; they get arrested for being an activist. I'm a strong believer in the fact that you should not blame the tools; you should blame the circumstances.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

I must dissent emphatically from any proposal to spend any money on preparing a statue of me, more especially at a time when people do not have enough food and clothing.

So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

Dissents are appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

I tell my students that the single most powerful thing that we have in this country - something that literally harbors no dissent and no questioning - is the all-powerful elite narrative.

These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.

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

On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.