Protest, Resistance and Revolution

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook.

And art made tongue-tied by authority.

O heaven! that such companions thou’dst unfold, And put in every honest hand a whip To lash the rascals naked through the world.

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

Put a tongue In every wound of Caesar, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

Great Caesar fell. O! what a fall was there, my countrymen; Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us.

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

Have you not made a universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores?

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine.

Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

The caterpillars of the commonwealth, Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back.

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.

This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought Should contrive our fees to pilfer, one who for his native land Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.

Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race .

The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor.