Quotessence
Home / Topics / Protest Quotes

Protest Quotes

Browse 1024 quotes about Protest.

Related topics

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldMenWayDisobedienceShouldCountryPoliticalWantCivil DisobedienceWarKnowsKindBelieveMayAmericaHumansFeelsFirstsSaidStatesDoeMeanSongStreetsVoiceActionLawLongTryingRightsSocialCoursesCultureMarchNeedsPeacefulUseGovernmentImportantMovementTodayYearsArtGivingHas BeensSoulChurchHandsHeartI BelieveIdeasLittlesMadeViolenceCryDemocracyDifferentHappensMindMomentsPeaceful ProtestPersonsSeemsStillsWould BeConditionsEvilFactsFormMightMoralProtest SongsRealReasonRevolutionShowsSometimesTogetherWellsDissentDoneFightingGroupsHelpingHumanityIndividualLeftPartyRiotStrongTwoWritingBlackChildrenCriticismDemonstrationElectionmore

Protest Quotes

“Protesting problems doesn’t really bring solutions. It just brings more problems. We reap what we sow. If we want to reap happiness, we must sow happiness. And that happiness inspires, strengthens others and builds bridges. If we want solutions, we have to think about solutions and be detached from the problem. Otherwise, [if we focus on the problem] we take the problem with us, [keep it active,] and poison the future. If we want to reap love, we must love. With no ifs and buts. And, we need to do it OURSELVES instead of asking others to do it. This is freedom. This is empowerment. This is our own solution from the problem, from our sorrow, frrom our pain. And the more people detach themselves from the unwanted, and walk the path of love, and [focus on] the joy of the wanted, the more solutions we achieve for the world.”

ActivismProtestActivistManifestingStop ComplainingProtestsFocus On PositiveFocus On SuccessProtestingPower Of Focus
Author:Elke Heinrich
Create image

“That free time is one of the biggest barriers to activism was, in a way, proven in the summer of 2020, as the protests over George Floyd and the slew of other Black lives lost became the most attended protests in American history. Up to twenty-six million Americans participated, a number that would be unthinkable were it not for the converging COVID-19 epidemic and the unprecedented amount of free time that accompanied it.”

ActivismProtestAmerican HistoryBlack Lives MatterRiotBlmEpidemicLgbt Advocates
Book:It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic
Create image

“Many of our white brothers misunderstand this fact because many of them fail to interpret correctly the nature of the Negro Revolution. Some believe that it is the work of skilled agitators who have the power to raise or lower the floodgates at will. Such a movement, maneuverable by a talented few, would not be a genuine revolution. This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals--the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations. In this time and circumstance, no leader or set of leaders could have acted as ringmasters, whipping a whole race out of purring contentment into leonine courage and action. If such credit is to be given to any single group, it might well go to the segregationists, who, with their callous and cynical code, helped to arouse and ignite the righteous wrath of the Negro.”

RacismActivismCivil RightsProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationWhitesAgitators
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“Washington is a city of spectacles. Every four years, imposing Presidential inaugurations attract the great and the mighty. Kings, prime ministers, heroes and celebrities of every description have been feted there for more than 150 years. But in its entire glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963. Among the nearly 250,000 people who journeyed that day to the capital, there were many dignitaries and many celebrities, but the stirring emotion came from the mass of ordinary people who stood in majestic dignity as witnesses to their single-minded determination to achieve democracy in their time. They came from almost every state in the union; they came in every form of transportation; they gave up from one to three days' pay plus the cost of transportation, which for many was a heavy financial sacrifice. They were good-humored and relaxed, yet disciplined and thoughtful. They applauded their leaders generously, but the leaders, in their own hearts, applauded their audience. Many a Negro speaker that day had his respect for his own people deepened as he felt the strength of their dedication. The enormous multitude was the living, beating heart of an infinitely noble movement. It was an army without guns, but not without strength. It was an army into which no one had to be drafted. It was white and Negro, and of all ages. It had adherents of every faith, members of every class, every profession, every political party, united by a single ideal. It was a fighting army, but no one could mistake that its most powerful weapon was love.”

FreedomEqualityActivismCivil RightsProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksWashington DcMarch On Washington
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides—and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.”

ViolenceActivismFrustrationProtestNonviolenceResentmentAfrican AmericansBlacksExtremismDemonstrations
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“The significant conclusion emerges that those whites without a vested interest in segregation have found acceptable exactly the changes that the nonviolent demonstrations present as their central demands. Those objectives Negroes have dramatized, fought for and defined have clearly become fair and reasonable demands to the white population, both North and South. The summer of our discontent, far from alienating America' white citizens, brought them closer into harmony with its Negro citizens than ever before.”

AmericaActivismCivil RightsProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationAmericans
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“If anyone had questioned how deeply the summer's activities had penetrated the consciousness of white America, the answer was evident in the treatment accorded the March on Washington by all the media of communication. Normally Negro activities are the object of attention in the press only when they are likely to lead to some dramatic outbreak, or possess some bizarre quality. The March was the first organized Negro operation which was accorded respect and coverage commensurate with its importance. The millions who viewed it on television were seeing an event historic not only because of the subject, but because it was being brought into their homes. Millions of white Americans, for the first time, had a clear, long look at Negroes engaged in a serious occupation. For the first time millions listened to the informed and thoughtful words of Negro spokesmen, from all walks of life. The stereotype of the Negro suffered a heavy blow. This was evident in some of the comment, which reflected surprise at the dignity, the organization and even the wearing apparel and friendly spirit of the participants. If the press had expected something akin to a minstrel show, or a brawl, or a comic display of odd clothes and bad manners, they were disappointed. A great deal has been said about a dialogue between Negro and white. Genuinely to achieve it requires that all the media of communication open their channels wide as they did on that radiant August day. As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. And every dedicated American could be proud that a dynamic experience of democracy in his nation's capital had been made visible to the world.”

DemocracyMediaNewsActivismProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesMarch On Washington
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“Recently, Roy Wilkins and I appeared on the television program "Meet the Press." There were the usual questions about how much more the Negro wants, but there seemed to be a new undercurrent of implications related to the sturdy new strength of our movement. Without the courtly complexities, we were, in effect, being asked if we could be trusted to hold back the surging tides of discontent so that those on the shore would not be made too uncomfortable by the buffeting and onrushing waves. Some of the questions implied that our leadership would be judged in accordance with our capacity to "keep the Negro from going too far." The quotes are mine, but I think the phrase mirrors the thinking of the panelists as well as of many other white Americans.”

ChangeActivismCivil RightsProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksMeet The Press
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“It's 1963: we're in the year of prophetic fulfillment. The last revival meeting is at hand, where the sons took up the cross of the fathers. White sons went forth to the dirt roads of Georgia and Alabama to prove to their fathers that the melting pot could still melt. "Negro" sons went forth to the Woolworths and Grants and Greyhounds of America to prove to their fathers that they could eat and sit and ride as well in the front as in the back, as well seated as standing.”

RaceActivismCivil RightsProtestBlacksSegregationRace RelationsCivil Rights MovementWhites1963
Book:Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
Create image

“We are in a decade, perhaps an age, when all sorts and conditions of men are rising up to protest (declare against) all sorts and conditions in our human situation. Everywhere, the "have-nots" are challenging the "haves"; the morally awake are prodding the indifferently asleep; the impatient are threatening the patient; both the Left and the Right are attacking the Center; the new thinks, that it despises the old. In a well-worn sense, "whatever is" is wrong. The current traitor is the middle class, and treason is gradually being defined as the liberal view. The choice offered seems to be be either a soma-soaked brotherly "happening" with Whirl as benevolent king or the orderly, albeit vicious, tyranny of Orwell's 1984. Within our own borders the arenas are brimming and booming: inner city ghettos, rural slums, local draft boards, P.T.A. committees, factories exuding smog, churches gathering affluence, campuses and coffee houses, Selma and Cicero, the Mississippi Delta and the cities of Detroit and Newark, nuclear test sites and pornographic paperbacks. Under attack are segregation, the war in Vietnam, control of the universities, inequalities in selective service, Christian hypocrisies, second-class citizenship, white collar culture, poverty, river pollution, and the BOMB.”

PoetryPoliticsClassActivismPoemsProtest1960s
Book:Poems of Protest Old and New
Create image

“Without the voices from the edges publicly demanding, wailing, and protesting, institutions and systems that engage in exclusionary, oppressive, or marginalizing practices continue to operate with apathy or impunity. Destructive systems do not change themselves, and those working for change within these systems can’t do it alone.”

KindnessRacismSocial JusticeActivismProtestRacism In AmericaInstitutional OppressionSocial UnrestInstitutional Change
Book:In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World
Create image

“Kindness, and the commitment to see the other as deserving of human dignity, demands of us to protest, resist, and do all that we can to fight that which says otherwise. Not only do we have the power to make sure that things do not get worse, but over the long haul, we also have the power to make long-lasting change for good. I need you. We need one another. We can only do this together.”

HumanityKindnessDignityActivismProtest
Book:In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World
Create image

“So I think that a protest,' she went on, 'like a work of dance or a work of music, is something done, at least in part, by the protestor for the protestor.' She saw I was about to interrupt so said, 'One more minute. Let me explain. Of course one hopes and plans for impact, for audience, for change, for efficacy. But, like dance, like music, a protest can be a religious ritual too, one that needn't be derisively looked down upon as magical thinking, but a spiritual act where the act itself is the goal. And that act may on some level be co-opted, but in the subjective world of the protestor it is a way, in itself, to be. Even in solipsism, the subject can be moral. You can call it hokum if you wish, but for the protestor, the protest makes a moral world in which she can abide.”

Science FictionActivismProtest
Book:Dear Cyborgs
Create image

“Look up photographs of what we now consider this country's -- any country's -- most morally diseased moments. [...] Ignore, for a moment, the people engaged most directly in the violence. Look instead at the faces of those who watch from the sidelines. Often, what you'll find is not an expression of proud support or the shock and horror all these people will claim to have felt much later, after the verdict is in. Rather, you'll see a childish little smirk. It's the smirk of someone who has come to realize the ugliness of the enterprise they have passively aligned with but cannot muster the courage to abandon now.”

SocietyProtestGenocideApathyPalestine
Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Create image

“We don't persuade our neighbors by mimicking their angry power-protests. We persuade them by holding fast to the gospel, by explaining our increasingly odd view of marriage, and by serving the world and our neighbors around us, as our Lord does, with a towel and a foot-bucket.”

PoliticsMarriageProtest
Book:Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches
Create image

“I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest. I see things a certain way, and as an artist I’m privileged in that arena to protest or say publicly what I’m thinking about. Maybe the strongest work I’ve done is because it was done with indignation. Considering myself as a feminist, I don’t want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or what art with a capital A would be. I just want it to be art. In a convoluted way, I am protesting- protesting the usual way art is looked at, being shoved into a period or category.”

ThinkingWayWantArtSaidDoneMightWould BeArtistCertainPeriodsArt IsMalesFeministReactionsProtestStrongestCategoriesUsualConsideringPrivilegedArenaIndignationConvoluted
Author:Nancy Spero
Create image

“Never will we be able to understand our times if we naively 'think' of this system of self Government as the work of a few gangsters or the creation of a pack of criminals we call a political party. The appeal of Socialism, Fascism and communism was principally negative; they were protests against a live and let live anything goes liberalism, a spineless indifference to causes, a failure to recognize that nothing was evil enough to hate, and nothing was good enough to die for.”

IfsThinkingSelfEnoughGovernmentAblePoliticalHateDiesEvilCausesPartyCreationNegativeCriminalsSocialismCommunismAppealsIndifferenceOur TimeLiberalismProtestGood EnoughFascismPacksPolitical PartiesGangstersSelf-governmentAnything GoesLive And Let LiveSpineless
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
Create image

“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”

IfsEndsHappensLiteratureIndividualStylePersonalityHabitLoversCloudsChecksBeing TrueStreamsProtestPerpetualQuotationsIndulgeSpontaneityIndulge InInsidiousGood Literature
Book:Streaks of life
Create image

“Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi.”

WorldIdeasSoulMovingVisionFeminismDangerMovementSourceNuclearProtestNeglectPhenomenonOur WorldInherentContinuingEcologyCatastrophePerilNot AloneRepressionSave The WorldDisarmamentExpediencyIndividuationFuturism
Book:City and Soul: Uniform Edition
Create image