Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [101-120] of 129 Resistance quotesResistance QuotesResistance Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.~ Eleanor Roosevelt Free societies…are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence.~ Salman Rushdie Surely a large part of the zealous repression of radical protest in America has its roots in the fact that millions of men who are apparently “insiders” know how vulnerable the system is because they know how ambiguous their own attachments to it are. The slightest challenge exposes the fragile foundations of legitimacy of the state.~ John Scharr Standing up to a tyrant has always been illegal and dangerous. There is no guarantee but one -- to not live like a slave, nor to die like one.~ Eric Schaub Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue...~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. True Liberty and Justice may require resistance to law .~ Second Monument to Shays' Rebellion The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.~ George Bernard Shaw Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying “No” to any authority -- literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.~ Ignazio Silone At what exact point, then should one resist the communists? ... How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if during periods of mass arrests people had simply not sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. ... The Organs [police] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers ... and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face.~ Justice Potter Stewart [A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve it’s high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding.~ Justice Potter Stewart So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.~ Cornelius Tacitus All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.~ Margaret Thatcher There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.~ Henry David Thoreau Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ...~ Henry David Thoreau To secure their enjoyment, however, certain protections or barriers have been erected which serve to maintain inviolate the three primary rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property. These may in America be said to be: 1. The bill of rights and written constitutions ... 2. The rights of bearing arms -- which with us is not limited and restrained by an arbitrary system of game laws as in England, but is particularly enjoyed by every citizen, and is among his most valuable privileges, since it furnishes the means of resisting as a freeman ought, the inroads of usurpation. 3. The right of applying to the courts of justice for the redress of injuries. ~ Henry St. George Tucker [T]his Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.~ Virginia Resolution of 1798 The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.~ Ludwig Von Mises Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.~ Ludwig von Mises Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print