Goethe: Everywhere revolutions are painful yet fruitful gestations of a people: they shed blood but create light, they eliminate men but elaborate ideas. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Che Guevara: When hopes and dreams are loose in the street, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
David Ben Gurion: There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that? wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Abraham Lincoln: The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Jefferson: If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertrand Russell: Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Charles Eliot Norton: The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
First Amendment: Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Henry Steele Commager: Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past while we silence the rebels of the present. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Eugene V. Debs: While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Samuel Gompers: To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice, they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
A. Philip Randolph: Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted. Freedom and justice must be struggled for by the oppressed of all lands and races... wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. A rural revolution is a revolution by which the peasantry overthrows the power of the feudal landlord class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Mao Zedong: Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gilbert Scott-Heron: The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will be no rerun, brothers. The Revolution - will be live. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
