Top 100 Quotes About Dissent
#1. To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him ... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police.
Salman Rushdie
#2. Love permits and even respects dissent: Authoritarianism does not. Everybody should learn the difference.
Jeri Massi
#4. Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
Charlotte Bronte
#5. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Howard Zinn
#6. It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot
Ron Paul
#7. I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysenery.
Woody Allen
#8. Nations need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and India's tradition of dissent and democratic debate is a positive aspect.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#9. The press exerts the pressure of dissent on officials otherwise inclined to rest content with the congratulations of their retainers.
Bill Vaughan
#10. The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.
Malcolm Gladwell
#11. A man doesn't have to agree with his government to be a patriot, does he? It takes a true patriot to dissent, to say he loves his country more than he cares for his own place in the social order.
Cassandra Clare
#12. Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
Mahatma Gandhi
#13. I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.
George Carlin
#14. Silence is hereby outlawed. Silence breeds independent thought, which in turn breeds dissent.
Frank Beddor
#15. Freedom is valued in a culture that wants to encourage dissent and to stimulate originality and independence. It belongs to a society which is open to change, and which esteems the agent of change, the individual, above its own peace of mind.
Jacob Bronowski
#16. DEFINITION Political correctness is an ideology that classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism, and which makes believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated.
Anthony Browne
#17. Our young people - and adults - should be aware that considerable dissent exists in the scientific world regarding the validity of molecules-to-man evolution.
Ken Ham
#18. The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians.
Roseanne Barr
#19. Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
Will Durant
#20. The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.
Christopher Hitchens
#21. I'm kind of perverse in that I think pessimism is helpful. My pessimism is my own kind of patriotism. My dissent.
Tracy Letts
#22. Don't exercise your freedom of speech until you have exercised your freedom of thought.
Tim Fargo
#23. An Act of Dissent is simply a way of saying, 'No, I do not accept this and, as my silence may be construed as acquiescence, I would like to make a small gesture to indicate that you can all go fuck yourselves.
Mark Thomas
#24. The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
Emma Goldman
#25. I understand the principles of dissent in parliament.
Jeremy Corbyn
#26. I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.
Thomas Browne
#27. 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
#28. The only voice of dissent you have to dispel is your own.
Anker Frankoni
#29. In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#31. This is the way dissent is handled in feminist realms: a contrary opinion or argument is actually an attack. This stems from the belief that your truth is the only truth, that your sense of trauma and oppression does not need to be examined or questioned. In
Jessa Crispin
#32. The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George ... Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security.
Ron Paul
#33. Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.
David F. Wells
#34. 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.
Bertrand Russell
#35. If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.
Abraham Lincoln
#36. I stood among them, but not of them: in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.
Lord Byron
#37. If President Obama has his way, you won't recognize the government, the free market system, or, frankly, America as you once knew it. His admonitions and his audacious policy goals demonstrate very clear motives: equalize, discourage dissent, and become a nation of apologists.
Bob Ehrlich
#38. And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance.
Glenn Greenwald
#39. It is scary to live in the Obama era with its use of government to suppress dissent
Dennis Prager
#40. Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party, and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up.
John McCain
#41. Because Freedom is the most important thing on life, let me Be.
John Steinbeck
#42. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
H.L. Mencken
#43. A single whisper can be quite a disturbance when the rest of the audience is silent.
Anthony Marra
#44. If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.
Bruce Sterling
#46. 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
#47. So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out.
Jim Hightower
#48. Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection.
Don Tapscott
#49. It is necessary to ensure that the requirement to combat terrorism is not used to clamp down on freedom of expression, legitimate dissent, freedom of association and so on.
Mary Robinson
#50. Well, dissent is the tradition in America, and I've been on the side of dissent a good bit of my career, particularly in the last many years of the Republican Congress.
Lloyd Doggett
#51. RBG's most famous words in the Hobby Lobby dissent could have appeared in any of her searing dissents: "The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.
Irin Carmon
#52. The outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights.
Bell Hooks
#53. True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents at home. The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.
Barack Obama
#54. It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.
Harold Pinter
#55. I can't wait until dissent is patriotic again.
David Burge
#57. Corporations took our innate impulse toward dissent and our desire for meaningful change, and transmuted them into effective sales tools for their products.
Daniel Pinchbeck
#58. Unlike lions and dogs, we are a dissenting animal. We need to dissent in the same way that we need to travel, to make money, to keep a record of our time on earth and in dream, and to leave a permanent mark. Dissension is a drive, like those drives.
Carol Bly
#59. How do you preserve your freedom when the powerful can use software bots to detect dissent and deploy drone aircraft to take out troublemakers? Human beings are increasingly unnecessary to wield power in the modern world.
Daniel Suarez
#61. The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.
Kurt Cobain
#62. By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.
Todd Akin
#63. Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent.
Abe Fortas
#64. In no other modern religion is dissent still a crime, punishable by death.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#65. 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.
David Mamet
#66. There's a tradition in the history of dissent in authoritarian countries of a certain kind of dissident, and their form of dissent is to live their lives as normally as possible.
Evan Osnos
#67. Truth is dissent, where all power resides in the Big Lie.
Allen Ginsberg
#68. Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition.
Cornel West
#70. I could never divide my selfe from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with mee in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent my selfe ...
Thomas Browne
#71. Managing dissent is about recognizing the value of disagreement, discord and difference.
Noreena Hertz
#72. Though we are politically enemies, yet with regard to Science it is presumable we shall not dissent from the practice of civilized people in promoting it
John Hancock
#73. Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State".
Antonin Scalia
#74. Democratic dissent is not disloyalty, it is a positive civic duty.
Shami Chakrabarti
#75. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
#76. When the jabot with scalloped glass beads glitters flat against the top of RBG's black robe, it's bad news for liberals. That's her dissent collar.
Irin Carmon
#77. Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Rosa Luxemburg
#78. It is not necessary, nor appropriate, to sow dissent and misrepresent employees or constantly to threaten industrial action.
Jim Ratcliffe
#80. No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host.
Tiffany Madison
#81. The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.
Nick Cohen
#82. The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.
Noam Chomsky
#83. Neither with those nor with the others, with all I agree and dissent; in all part of truth and part of error must be seen.
Michael Servetus
#85. Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.
Lewis H. Lapham
#86. Objective Reality and Truth requires neither ones consent nor dissent.
R. Alan Woods
#87. The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it.
Monica Crowley
#88. It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.
Glenn Greenwald
#89. There is a need today for what I call prophetic simplicity. We need voices of dissent that point to another way, creative models that take exception to the givens of society.
Richard J. Foster
#90. When you would suffocate or ignore dissent, remember how many times you dissented.
Fausto Cercignani
#91. This dissent isn't going to suppress itself.
James Lileks
#92. This is why i hate social media. It gives a voice to people who dont (sic) deserve one.
Gary Streeter
#93. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth.
William Faulkner
#94. Not enough people know or understand just how little freedom we have left.
Korban Blake
#95. Modern 'liberalism' is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of 'tolerance' are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to 'celebrate diversity' coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity.
Mark Steyn
#96. You have a responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself.
Joss Whedon
#97. History is replete with rulers who maintained stability at the cost of justice, humanity and morality. Everyone from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Muammar Gaddafi managed productive economies, sophisticated bureaucracies and large populations whilst simultaneously generating simmering dissent.
Sidin Vadukut
#98. As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.
David Mitchell
#99. The first opinion the Court ever filed has a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court ... When someone is writing for the Court, he hopes to get eight others to agree with him, so many of the majority opinions are rather stultified.
William O. Douglas
#100. Men and women...sill live together for centuries without agreeing on anything.
Girdhar Joshi
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