Quotes about engaging in a protest

About a year ago, a DI reader named Mike Baker handed me his extensive collection of quotes and invited me to publish them. Today's quotes from Mike are on the topic right and the duty to engage in a political protest: "A Patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward R. Abbey "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis." Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (1265-1321) "Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.: Roger Nash Baldwin So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. Roger Nash Baldwin "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke "True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." Clarence Darrow "No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." Barbara Ehrenreich "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violen trevolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy “Think for yourself, question authority.” Timothy Leary "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." Edward R. Murrow "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." The Nation (15 July 1991) "First they arrested the communists, but I was not a communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the social democrats, but I was not a social democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists, and I did nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the Jews and the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me, and there was no one left to do anything about it." Rev. Martin Niemoller, nazi prison survivor "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato "Do not... regard the critics as questionable patriots. What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo?" Adlai Stevenson "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." Henry David Thoreau "Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." Oscar Wilde

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Yet more quotes

I collect quotes from many sources and occasional post them at this site. I think of them novels wrapped up in sentences. Here's my latest batch of favorite quotes: "The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools." Doug Larson "The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." Franklin D. Roosevelt “Remembering that you are going to di3e is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve Jobs 1987 "Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens." Nick Diamos “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ― Malcolm X "Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago." Horace Mann (1796 - 1859) "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." H. L. Mencken "I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world." Walt Whitman "The day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. When that day comes, we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation." - James Madison "I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience." Shelley Winters (1922 - 2006) "In wartime truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill "The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." Richard Bach "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death." Joan D. Vinge, Catspaw When someone asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government he and the other founders had birthed on this country, he famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” "We do not inherit this earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." Native American proverb "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) "The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one." Joan Baez "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." Carl Sagan "The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." Gloria Steinem "No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather." Michael Pritchard

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Quotes about the news media

A DI reader named Mike Baker offered to let me publish his collection of quotes. Today, I'm publishing his quotes concerning the news media: The American mass media have achieved what American political might could not: World domination. -- Akbar S. Ahmed The safest way to ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership. But this ideal has been sacrificed by our government... -- Ben Bagdikian "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." --George W. Bush, 43rd President, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 “Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home.” -- Stephen Colbert I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that. -- Walter Cronkite I certainly think we have an emergency in media, and we gotta fix it. -- Phil Donahue Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty. ~Anne Louise Germaine de Stael Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We're supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We're not supposed to be their megaphone. That's what the corporate media have become. -- Amy Goodman "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it" --Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of Germany 1933-1945 Since an informed citizenry is the basis for a healthy democracy, independent, non-corporate media are more crucial today than ever before -- Dahr Jamail "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." -Thomas Jefferson, "Letter to Col. Edward Carrington", January 16, 1787 Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. ~ Thomas Jefferson The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--diliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. -John F. Kennedy "The news and truth are not the same thing." --Walter Lippmann, 1889-1974, American journalist "Disinformation is a large part of its[CIA] covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies." --Ralph McGehee, former CIA intelligence analyst, author of Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA "The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state." David McGowan By the end of the millenium five men controlled the world's media. And the people rejoiced, because their TVs told them to. -- Michael Moore The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. -- Bill Moyers An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too. -- Bill Moyers "Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light." ~ Joseph Pulitzer "The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread...We are tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes...We are intellectual prostitutes." --John Swinton, New York Times editor in a speech before the New York Press Club, 1953 The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. -- Gore Vidal

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Quotes on Patriotism

About a year ago, a DI reader named Mike Baker offered me his collection of quotes, including these quotes on patriotism. Thanks, Mike. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. ~ Edward Abbey Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. ~ John Adams (1735 - 1826) I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. ~ James A. Baldwin "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." ~ G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) "True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence S. Darrow I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~Diogenes "He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." ~ Albert Einstein When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. ~ Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. ~ Guy de Maupassant Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him? ~ Blaise Pascal [caption id="attachment_19729" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Erich Vieth 2011"][/caption] Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph: ~ Haile Selassie Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. ~ George Bernard Shaw "My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders." ~Mark Twain It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~ Voltaire

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More Quotes . . .

I love to collect quotes. You'll find hundreds of them under the category "Quotes." Here is a set of quotes I've collected over the past 2 months: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire (1694 - 1778) "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962) "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -Michael Jordan "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) ‎"Study: An increasing number of Americans lack the reading and math skills to do anything but run for President." Andy Borowitz "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." - Plato Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980), Nausea (1938) "Vendredi" There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters. - Alice Thomas Ellis There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun. - Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Doing what you love means dealing with things you don't. - David Shore, House M.D., Last Temptation, 2011 "Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in MY system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few." -Harry S. Truman Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. - Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938) “Get used to the idea that death should not matter to us, for good and evil are based on sensation. Death, however, is the cessation of all sensation, hence death, ostensibly the most terrifying of all evils, has no meaning for us, for as long as we exist, death will not be present. When death comes, then we will no longer be in existence.” - Epicurus “If I were wrong, one would be enough.” - Albert Einstein "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov belongs in Skepticism 101 "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), (attributed) "It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them." Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799) "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

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