Protest, Resistance and Revolution

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

If a man perfectly righteous should come upon earth, he would find so much opposition that he would be imprisoned, reviled, scourged, and in fine crucified by such, who, though they were extremely wicked, would yet pass for righteous men.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Revolution is not the uprising against pre-existing order, but the setting-up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed-upon myths of its conquerors.

The majority has the might—more’s the pity—but it hasn’t the right. . . . The minority is always right.

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.