Top 100 Quotes About Dissent
#1. I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best form of protection is to be incredibly good at what you do and keep good discipline in class.
Jonathan Kozol
#2. The great reward given to intelligent people is that they can invent all the rules and equate any dissent with stupidity.
Catherine Lowell
#3. Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women's movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There's no room for dissent.
Camille Paglia
#4. We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance. Nor should the price of immunity be refraining from controversial or provocative dissent.
Glenn Greenwald
#5. When everybody agrees," Taggart's voice suddenly went shrill, "when people are unanimous, how does one man dare to dissent? By what right? That's what I want to know - by what right?
Ayn Rand
#6. Some suggested over the weekend that it is wrong to expect Elian Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami.
Katie Couric
#7. Feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, orwe are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.
Bell Hooks
#8. It's much easier to make jokes about sensitive issues if there is some dissent, some conflict.
Mo Rocca
#9. I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses ... 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.
John Locke
#10. What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#11. But the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion. A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.
Tony Judt
#12. Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.
Natan Sharansky
#13. Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.
Jonah Goldberg
#14. Liberation movements - operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially - thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.
Bill Keller
#15. People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted, but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent.
Natan Sharansky
#16. The intolerant man will not rely on persuasion, or on the worth of the idea. He would deny to others the very freedom of opinion or of dissent which he so stridently demands for himself. He cannot trust democracy.
Robert Kennedy
#17. I am a man who perceives life in a certain way, a man who rejects things that defecate on humankind, who rejects anything that will not give people room for dissent.
Harry Belafonte
#18. It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.
Michael Hastings
#19. The aspects of patriotism that hush dissent, encourage going along, and sanction comfortable distancing and compliance with what is indecent and unacceptable ... those aspects are too fundamental to ignore or gloss over.
Bernadine Dohrn
#20. Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime. Jacob Bronowski in Science and Human Values
Jacob Bronowski
#21. If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
Howard Zinn
#22. A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
Barbara Deming
#23. Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent.
Pete Seeger
#24. What distinguishes exemplary boards is that they are robust, effective social systems ... The highest performing companies have extremely contentious boards that regard dissent as an obligation and that treat no subject as undiscussable.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
#25. The disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion.
Tony Judt
#26. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.
Banksy
#27. I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that.
Laura Schlessinger
#28. History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent.
Glenn Greenwald
#29. Sometimes a citizenry should not simply "be good". You have to leave space for dissent, real dissent.
Sherry Turkle
#30. I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.
Suzanne Collins
#31. Intolerance of dissent is a well-noted feature of the American national character.
J. William Fulbright
#32. It is tempting to conform: community life is a lot easier where everyone appears to agree with everyone else, and where dissent is blunted by the conventions of compromise.
Tony Judt
#34. When I reread it as a teenager, Fahrenheit 451 had become a book about independence, about thinking for yourself. It was about treasuring books and the dissent inside the covers of books. It was about how we as humans begin by burning books and end by burning people.
Ray Bradbury
#35. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariats and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity.
Northrop Frye
#36. Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.
Warren G. Bennis
#37. Egyptian authorities, the mere presence of prestigious outside observers gives the balloting a much-desired stamp of legitimacy, even in the face of the government's harsh crackdown on political dissent.
Anonymous
#38. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love.
George R R Martin
#39. Dissent ... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible.
Norman Thomas
#40. Let your dissent fuel you, your anger inspire you, your rage convey you, and your fury strike a chilling fear onto the spines of your enemies.
Evan Meekins
#41. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
Edward R. Murrow
#42. I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
Barbara Kingsolver
#43. Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent.
Gary Hamel
#45. When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.
William Shenstone
#46. The use of 'conspiracy theory' as a derogatory - as an epithet almost - is something the propagandists have perfected over the decades, and it's a useful tool for eliminating articulate dissent and other points of view, and information that might be inconvenient for a policy agenda.
Chris Sanders
#47. MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.
Ambrose Bierce
#48. 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
#49. The human rights record within China seems to rise and fall over time, but it's very clear that in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and since then, there's been a greater intolerance of dissent and the human rights record of China has been going in the wrong direction.
Gary Locke
#50. Who is an elected government in a constitutional democracy to decide it will not tolerate dissent.
Christina Engela
#52. And only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its severest tests upon the attainment of its maturity.
John F. Kennedy
#53. It occurred to the man that the biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path.
Django Wylie
#54. The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as from 1933 onward, "political criminality" was given a much broader definition than ever before and more forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more "laws" or law-like measures were put on the books than ever.
Sheila Fitzpatrick
#55. Presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense- irresponsible babble ... Humanity would have rejected it with scorn. Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognized and accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
Kenneth Grahame
#56. In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.
Natan Sharansky
#57. Your mind is your only judge of truth-and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.
John Galt
#58. 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.
John Stuart Mill
#59. Philosophers say that people are all guided by a single standard. When they assent to a thing, it is because they feel it must be true, when they dissent, it is because they feel something isn't true, and when they suspend judgement, it is because they feel that the thing is unclear.
Epictetus
#60. Humor is the ovum of dissent, and the Juche should fear it.
David Mitchell
#61. The university is the last remaining platform for national dissent.
Leon Eisenberg
#62. The compasses are disappointingly true, pointing north over and over, when all he wants is for one to dissent, to demur, to show him the new direction he cannot find on his own.
Matt Bell
#63. 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
#64. dissent must be an obligation, not an option.
Eric Schmidt
#65. The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.
I. F. Stone
#66. Whether history will judge this war to be different or not we cannot say. But this we can say with certainty: A government and a society that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way.
Henry Steele Commager
#67. A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.
Henry Steele Commager
#68. April 18, 2007: RBG launches her era of furious dissent with the abortion case Gonzales v. Carhart.
Irin Carmon
#69. Perhaps why I am so uniquely terrible is simply that I represent total Dissent. Total Dissent. T.D. 19 + 4 = 23.
William S. Burroughs
#70. And here and now we must insist again that fidelity, honor, and love of country demand untrammeled debate and open dissent. At no time is that truer than in the midst of a war rooted in deceit and justified by continuing deception.
John F. Kerry
#71. The commonest way to cheat an employer is not by stealing his money or loafing on the job, but by refusing to disagree when you feel he is wrong. If he is paying you for your brains, and not just for your body, an employee has an obligation to dissent from decisions he thinks wrong.
Sibichen K. Mathew
#72. The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court ... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it.
William O. Douglas
#73. Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.
Margaret Heffernan
#75. The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That's the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.
Edward R. Murrow
#76. The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.
James Surowiecki
#77. Dissent is the mark of freedom, as originality is the mark of independence of mind. ... No one can be a scientist ... if he does not have independence of observation and of thought.
Jacob Bronowski
#78. Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
John Charles Polanyi
#79. This is an amazing country, for all of its faults. My feeling is, dig in and let's try to change the world. Dissent is not only your right, it's your duty.
Susan Sarandon
#80. There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between labels, publishing companies and artists. A lot of it has to do with older licensing schemes.
Sean Parker
#82. America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation.
Henry Steele Commager
#83. Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.
Hubert H. Humphrey
#84. Erik was one of those inadequate people who were so scared by life that they preferred to live under harsh authority, to be told what to do and what to think by a government that allowed no dissent. They were foolish and dangerous, but there were an awful lot of them.
Ken Follett
#85. Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#86. This kind of totalization of security consciousness [after tragedy of 9/11] has the effect within classrooms (and beyond) of constraining the imagination and reinforcing attitudes that privilege the forces of law and order as against the crosscurrents of freedom and dissent.
Richard A. Falk
#87. If a leader comes to office in a seemingly fair election and tolerates dissent, he or she qualifies for our seal of approval.
Stephen Kinzer
#88. I don't know whether God talks to him or whether he's trying to undo what his father did. But he believes in the mission. The body bags aren't going to deter him. Public dissent isn't going to deter him. He's going to go ahead. And that's more frightening.
Seymour Hersh
#90. Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Alan Barth
#91. The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.
Rachel Cusk
#92. More access to information meant more dissent, more informed discussion, more widespread criticism of authority. Information changed the world.
Steve Berry
#93. We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion.
Richard Perle
#94. 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.
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason.
Monica Crowley
#96. Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.
Eric Hoffer
#97. Throughout the lead-up to the war, CNN worked hard to air all sides of the story. We had a regular segment called Voices of Dissent in which we spent time covering antiwar protests and interviewing those who were opposed to the war with Iraq.
Jim Walton
#98. Not only is the Kyoto approach to global warming wrong-headed, the climate change establishment's suppression of dissent and criticism is little short of a scandal. The IPCC should be shut down.
Nigel Lawson
#99. In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively.
Ismail Haniyeh
#100. In the face of severe injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure.
Glenn Greenwald
