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Protest Quotes

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Protest Quotes

“One must hesitate when calling these protests pro-Palestinian because in that labelling, we lose their truth. They are protests against senseless killings, they are a rejection of regimes that support occupation and a cry for an end to war as a pathway to peace. These protests are pro-humanity in its true sense of the word, an all-encompassing humanity that is not cherry-picked by the powers that be. They are protests against hypocrisy and for a right to life.”

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Author:Aysha Taryam
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“I remember when we went into Kezar Stadium on the march (April 15, 1967, San Francisco) playing that song—I felt like I was part of some surrealistic dream. We were riding along in this truck. The band was playing. It was like a misty kind of rain. It was early in the morning. The streets were lined with people hanging out of windows and everything. And we were going up the street. I was just stoned out of my head on LSD, everything kind of like vibrating and I was looking around and you could see soldiers and people sneering and you see pictures of napalmed children and signs saying “End the War” and we were playing this joyous incredible music and people were dancing all around the truck just dancing and throwing flowers up in the air and everything and we were singing, “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die!” And it was like we were sort of heading off to these beautiful pastoral gas chambers, we were all going to parade ourselves into these gas chambers and then they were going to wipe us out… I mean, if you gotta go, you might as well go out dancing and singing.”

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Author:Country Joe McDonald
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“You earth, you soil, you chewing monster of human hearts in casseroles...”

DeathNatureLossAngerMourningProtestExistentialSurrealism
Book:SONG FOR YOU / CÂNTEC PENTRU TINE (Bilingual English–Romanian Edition / Ediție bilingvă engleză–română / 2025): Poems of Love, Madness & Resurrection / ... nebunie și renaștere
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“If peaceful protesting really worked, the need to peacefully protest would have subsided to almost zero a long time ago! Instead, the thing that has subsided to almost zero are the number of complaints filed against police officers that are actually upheld.”

LongTimePeacePolicePeacefulProtestZeroNeedComplaintsPolice BrutalityPolicemenSheriffPolice OfficerPolice CorruptionPolice StateThingPolicemanAgainstNumberReallyWorkedInsteadAlmostActuallyProtestingAgoUpheldFiledSubsided
Author:Steven Magee
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“This protest spoke to me—the humanist principles felt connected to the minimalist essence of long-distance hiking, the desire to transcend the smoke and mirrors of our country’s established society, revealing what remains in all its splendor: the magnificent, resilient human soul.”

SocietyProtestHumanistHikingHuman SoulMinimalistResiliencyOccupy Wall StreetSmoke And MirrorsWealth Gap
Book:Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir
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“Sympathy is not action, and does not absolve us of the need to do something. Action is effective with this travesty, pushing back creates friction and exposure if incapable of stopping the destruction altogether. He's weak tea. Not just Putin can bully him. Even Musk can bully him, even Musk's young son. We have to keep remembering that. And the political minions following him can even more easily be bullied-- that's how he got them on board in the first place. They don't want to lose their place and their power. Do something. Make a call. Write a letter. Attend a protest or a town hall. It may not stop everything, but it may stop something. And at least we'll have tried.”

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Author:Shellen Lubin
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“Connell doesn't read the campus papers much, but he has still managed to hear about the debating society inviting a neo-Nazi to give a speech. It's all over social media. There was even an article in The Irish Times. Connell hasn't commented on any of the Facebook threads, but has liked several comments calling for the invite to be rescinded, which is probably the most strident political action he has ever taken in his life.”

ActionProtestActivistDirect Action
Book:Normal People
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“Shall we not recover ourselves? Shall we not redeem ourselves to one another? Shall we not restore this world? Could we not be the generation who did what always should have been done? Who took the hard path so that humanity could be returned to the right path? Shall we not reexamine all that we choose to pursue and reconsider what will actually fulfill us? The past has been defined by what we have done; while the present and future are decided by what we choose to do. Shall we believe in what should be and go in search of it? Shall we believe in what needs to be and build it together? We become more by believing that we can be more. Life becomes better when we are willing to act on the belief that it can be better. To believe is to reach and reach is what we all must do.”

LifeActionSurvivalClimate ChangeDenialProtestResist
Book:Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations
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“O woman who is not separate from us who is chained beaten strangled this song is for you O woman who is not separate from the homeland who is oppressed silenced persecuted this fury is for you O woman who rages against this regime who marches resists protests this prayer is for you O woman whose wild tresses are tied with a noose this cry is for you we rise together for you O Mahsa from your blood poppies will grow this revolution is for you”

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Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Years ago, a member of Congress slipped a laminated quote into my hand that he must have thought I would find meaningful. I paid little attention at first and unfortunately I don’t recall just who gave me the quote. I placed it next to my voting card and have carried it ever since. The quote came from Elie Wiesel’s book One Generation After. The quote was entitled “Why I Protest.” Author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the one righteous man of Sodom, who walked the streets protesting against the injustice of this city. People made fun of him, derided him. Finally, a young person asked: “Why do you continue your protest against evil; can’t you see no one is paying attention to you?” He answered, “I’ll tell you why I continue. In the beginning, I thought I would change people. Today, I know I cannot. Yet, if I continue my protest, at least I will prevent others from changing me.” I’m not that pessimistic that we can’t change people’s beliefs or that people will not respond to the message of liberty and peace. But we must always be on guard not to let others change us once we gain the confidence that we are on the right track in the search for truth.”

TruthPoliticsPeaceLibertyConfidenceProtestBeliefsRon PaulElie Wiesel
Book:Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom
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“Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s. Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation. And that is a vision of America that most of the people in this country cannot and will not abide.”

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Author:Charles M. Blow
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“If you wait until you find something to speak up for, something that you’re passionate about that concerns you and attacks your own beliefs, then eventually, when the day finally arrives, you might also find that you have forgotten how to speak.”

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Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Did hope help us to survive, or not? Too many families clung to it all through the war, thus falling into the enemy's trap. But would they have survived without hope? Hope is sometimes unworthy of us, Tamar said, but despair is even worse if it kills the will to act, to confront events, to protest evil, to shout, No! We are not blind, we will not submit! If the absurd exists, we will respond. With reason or with more absurdity—but we'll respond.”

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Book:The Forgotten
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“Protesters who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

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Book:What Are People For?
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“I stand for women. I stand for men. I stand for those the world ignores. I stand for those who break, yet rise again. I stand for the disabled, the lost, the poor. I stand for the outcast, the unheard, the unseen. I stand for children, for their dreams and their light. I stand for the elderly, their wisdom, their fight. I stand for freedom, for truth, for choice. I stand for every race, every culture, every voice. I stand for the weary, the hopeless, the scarred. I stand for equality, no matter how hard. I stand for justice, for love, for peace. I stand for you, I stand for me. I stand, period.”

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Author:N’Zuri Za Austin
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“At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in ‘arousing the world’, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference.”

PoliticsFreedomTyrannyProtestTotalitarianismCivil DisobedienceGandhiPacifism
Book:Reflections on Gandhi
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“When there is no process, people lose hope that their voices will be heard. And then they take action, even if there's no legal route to do so. But this action might not be the one they really want to take. Perhaps they want to have a community-wide conversation about a monument or make some changes to it. Understanding and reconciliation can happen in many ways - but when authorities refuse to listen to calls for removal, some people will think they have no choice but to topple a monument.”

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Book:Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments
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“But we need to search for and find, what we need to own and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governments, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. In the present circumstances, I'd say the only thing worth globalizing is dissent.”

ProtestCivil Disobedience
Book:The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
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“A Community in Conversation Last week I went to the Chill Out and Proud festival to sell my books of poetry. It was not my first gay pride festival, but it was Somerset’s. There are a few observations that I had this particular day. My observations have very little to do with morality and more to do with wanting to live in a community that can communicate. My first observation was that my family and I were on high alert and felt a sense of fear for the first time in my life in the town of Somerset. It was not the people attending the festival that left us feeling uneasy, but rather the protestors. My second observation is that there were two groups of what would seem to be opposites, Christians and Neo Nazi white supremacists, standing side by side holding signs and yelling into an otherwise quiet and peaceful group of citizens. I understand everyone’s right to protest and be heard but the method of communicating our differences should be a checkpoint of self reflection. I had a calm conversation with one of the protesters who approached me. I asked him to consider that yelling at people might result in them putting their guards up, increasing the tension, and in turn, people yelling back. It’s a cyclical deterioration where no one hears or understands one another. Anger and fear are the brothers that are born of this kind of relationship. I would say the same to those who yell back at the protesters. We are going to be a community of diverse people who do not think the same or live the same lifestyle, but if we are going to live together peaceably, we need to find a better way to disagree. My last observation is that the protestor also asked me why I was there, did I have a family member who is gay? He stated, “You don’t just come to these things for no reason”. I replied, “Honestly, I did start going and taking my family to gay pride festivals just to be amongst other cultures. It’s good to get to know people who are different from yourself.” The world’s a big place and you may find that you have more in common with people than you think or, in this case, that you know more gay people than you think. I would like to say the same to you. Somerset is a lot more diverse than you think and we have a lot more in common than you think. The only way we will love our neighbor as ourselves is by getting to know our neighbors, even in the midst of our differences. Protesting often times takes a stance of offense; a form of violence that may not always be physical but is a form of violence all the same. Everyone has the right to be heard, but only if they are willing to really listen to others in an attempt to understand. As an atheist, I have never stood outside a church and disrupted their gathering, although I am willing to have a conversation about how my journey brought me here and how you have come to this point. For me to enter a gathering and protest is an offensive move that would cause the people involved to put up walls. It would not be welcomed and I would not do it. It would be a hindrance to us actually knowing and understanding each other. The only way to truly know someone is by being with them, by conversation. We will not agree. There are too many of us and if we agreed on every point of life then that would be another checkpoint for self reflection. I am just asking us to practice a certain amount of hospitality no matter your beliefs about each other, whether gay or straight; whether Christian, Agnostic, or Atheist; whether Democrat, Republican, or Democratic Socialist; whether you’re the protestor or the protested against; in person or on Facebook, let us contemplate mindful listening, empathy, patience, kindness, and the well-being of people who are different than yourself. Eric Overby [email protected]”

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Author:Eric Overby
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“It's an insidious thing," Wanda said. "It never happens overnight. This kind of thing crept into our community a long time ago. It latched on. It fed on prejudice. Selfishness. Peoples inability to see life through someone else's eyes. And it grew, bigger and bigger, until we got to a point where some people don't even question why a cop should be allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.”

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Book:Anger Is a Gift
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“I was working towards my bachelor's degree in creative writing at Arizona State University when videos, pictures, and stories from these protests started blooming across my Facebook feed. I saw Native people holding their ground and being ground down by the opposing police force. I saw them bitten by dogs and hosed down and maimed by rubber bullets hitting their faces and bodies, all while bright white words scrolled across the bottom of the video, explaining the situation and giving statistics.”

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Book:Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
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