Abraham Lincoln: This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4188
Thomas Jefferson: I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. (...) It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4190
Natalie Merchant: There is one tradition in America I am proud to inherit. It is our first freedom and the truest expression of our Americanism: the ability to dissent without fear. It is our right to utter the words, "I disagree." We must feel at liberty to speak those words to our neighbors, our clergy, our educators, our news media, our lawmakers and, above all, to the one among us we elect President. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4193
Barbara Ehrenreich: No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4194
John Adams: As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected ... before a drop of blood was shed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4199
Muhammad Ali: Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10, 000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4200
Vaclav Havel: Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4201
Martin Luther King, Jr.: We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4202
Edward R. Murrow: We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4203
