Quotes about protest
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“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

“Why do I feel like I can't trust you anymore?'

I wanted him to lash out. I wanted him to fight, to protest, to argue- to do anything but look deeper into my eyes and say, 'because the Gallagher Academy doesn't admit fools”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Fools, Feeling, Fight

“No," Preston snapped. But he didn't protest long because, if I'm going to be honest-which is kind of the point of these reports-I was already unzipping his pants.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

“Better be," Eve said. She mock-bit at his finger. "I could totally date somebody else, you know."
"And I could rent out your room."
"And I could put your game console on eBay."
"Hey," Shane protested. "Now you're just being mean.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Game

“The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955) http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1955-martin-luther-king-jr-montgomery-bus-boycott 1950s Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches Context: We are here, we are here this evening because we're tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Idea, Strong

“Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

War

“No!" Jimmy protested.”

Ben Elton (1959) English comedian, author, playwright, actor and director

Source: Meltdown

“That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Law

“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.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Poem of Difficult Hope".
Source: What Are People For? (1990)
Context: Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for 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.

Hope, Thinking, Success, Heart

“I don't get this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People

“Even more blood welled up and spilled down his arm, splattering onto the ground.
“Camille’s carpet,” Magnus protested.
“It’s blood,” said Will. “She ought to be thrilled.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

God

“To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest — this is where man's first duty lies.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry. Sabotage is essentially a protest of the human spirit against dull mechanism. And the emphasis which democracy places upon political methods tends to transform mere sporadic acts of sabotage into an organized conspiracy against society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 56

Democracy, Motivation, Business, Nature

“I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

Address to the National Student Council (1965)

“In its distinctive strategy and internal dynamics and its rich intellectual tradition, Hizb al-Tahrir points up the heterogeneity of twentieth-century Islamist protest movements in the Middle East.”

Suha Taji-Farouki (1950) British Islamic scholar

A Fundamental Quest – Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Search for the Islamic Caliphate, Grey Seal, London 1996

“The British Empire spread Anglo-Saxon culture around the globe–Protestant morals, individualism, the rule of law. Most British colonies rejected those values. Only the ones populated by actual British people–America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand–managed to hold on to them and, as a result, prospered.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

People, Law

“Judaism, Christianity’s parent sect, is the most powerful of protests against nature. The Old Testament asserts that a father god made nature and that the differentiation into objects and gender was after the fact of his maleness. Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

God, Religion, History, Nature

“Dialectics is the way of seeking for truth by talking with others from different points of view, through "Yes" and "No," until a "Yes" has been reached which is hardened in the fire of many "No's" and which unites the elements of truth promoted in the discussion. It is most unfortunate that in recent years the name "dialectical theology" has been applied to a theology that is strongly opposed to any kind of dialectics and mediation and that constantly repeats the "Yes" to its own and the "No" to any other position. This has made it difficult to use the term "dialectical" to denote theological movements of a really dialectical, that is a mediating, character; and it has resulted in the cheap and clumsy way of dividing all theologians into naturalists and supernaturalists, or into liberals and orthodox. The Protestant Era by Paul Tillich 1948 Introduction”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

The Protestant Era (1948)

Truth, Way

“The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. "There it is, the kintir," one of the women said. Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, it's almost finished."”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

When the sewing was finished, he cut the thread off with his teeth.
Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 2: Under the Talal Tree

Life, Women, Pain, Grandma

“When the strike started in 1965, most of our friends forsook us for a while. They ran — or were just too busy to help. But the California Migrant Ministry held a meeting with its staff and decided that the strike was a matter of life or death for farm workers everywhere, and that even if it meant the end of the Migrant Ministry they would turn over their resources to the strikers. The political pressure on the Protestant Churches was tremendous and the Migrant Ministry lost a lot of money. But they stuck it out, and they began to point the way to the rest of the Church. In fact, when 30 of the strikers were arrested for shouting Huelga [Strike], 11 ministers went to jail with them.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Mexican-American and the Church (1968)

Life, Death, Money, Way

“"Then he was wrong to have been born at all. Cheek- eek-eek-eek, oo, hoo!" chuckled Rinkitink, his fat body shaking with merriment. "But it's hard to prevent oneself from being born; there's no chance for protest, eh, Bilbil?"”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Rinkitink of Oz (1916), Ch. 5 : The Three Pearls
Later Oz novels

Chance

“Greenpeace protesters who lived on the trees right above the planned radar location and who eat environmentally friendly roots, insect, excrements, and dirt.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/09/czech-poland-missile-defense-system.html The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

Tree

“Evidently, there is a political element in the attack on The Satanic Verses which has killed and injured good if obstreperous Muslims in Islamabad, though it may be dangerously blasphemous to suggest it. The Ayatollah Khomeini is probably within his self-elected rights in calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, or of anyone else for that matter, on his own holy ground. To order outraged sons of the Prophet to kill him, and the directors of Penguin Books, on British soil is tantamount to a jihad. It is a declaration of war on citizens of a free country, and as such it is a political act. It has to be countered by an equally forthright, if less murderous, declaration of defiance…. I do not think that even our British Muslims will be eager to read that great vindication of free speech, which is John Milton’s Areopagitica. Oliver Cromwell’s Republic proposed muzzling the press, and Milton replied by saying, in effect, that the truth must declare itself by battling with falsehood in the dust and heat…. I gain the impression that few of the protesting Muslims in Britain know directly what they are protesting against. Their Imams have told them that Mr Rushdie has published a blasphemous book and must be punished. They respond with sheeplike docility and wolflike aggression. They forgot what Nazis did to books … they shame a free country by denying free expression through the vindictive agency of bonfires…. If they do not like secular society, they must fly to the arms of the Ayatollah or some other self-righteous guardian of strict Islamic morality.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

'Islam's Gangster Tactics', in the London Independent newspaper , 1989
Writing

War, Truth, Books, Thinking

“You rebel against the tribal and look for the individual, for your own voice as against the stereotypical voice of the tribe or the tribe's stereotype of itself. You have to establish yourself against your predecessor, and doing so can well involve what they like to call self-hatred. I happen to think that—all those protestations notwithstanding—your self hatred was real and a positive force in its very destructiveness. Since to build something new often requires that something else be destroyed, self-hatred is valuable for a young person. What should he or she have instead—self-approval, self-satisfaction, self-praise? It's not so bad to hate the norms that keep a society from moving on, especially when the norms are dictated by fear as much as by anything else and especially when that fear is of the enemy forces of the overwhelming majority. But you seem now to be so strongly motivated by a need for reconciliation with the tribe that you aren't even willing to acknowledge how disapproving of its platitudinous demands you were back then, however ineluctably Jewish you may also have felt. The prodigal son who once upset the tribal balance—and perhaps even invigorated the tribe's health—may well, in his old age, have a sentimental urge to go back home, but isn't this a bit premature in you, aren't you really too young to have it so fully developed?”

Philip Roth book The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

Nathan Zuckerman to Philip Roth
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)

Hate, Health, Age, Fear

“In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Pop Chronicles, Show 33 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19792/m1/, interview recorded 2.14.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Art, Sense, Singing

“There are red lines that I as a democrat, say you cannot cross. I see it as defiance against Israel and Jerusalem as its capital as well as another protest against the historical narrative, a matter already pending before the High Court. (Responding to a MK Tibi-proposed bill recognising Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state)”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

Israel national news http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/229567#.U5gRtvldXs9, 16 January 2012

“There have been violations in the protest squares, especially in Sana'a. This is natural when hundreds of thousands of people [protest] for extended periods of time. However, these violations are marginal, and do not tarnish the beauty of the revolution. We see rival tribes meeting and debating in their tents, and men and women struggling [together] in the square to oust the regime.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman – A Profile (2011)

Women, Men, People, Beauty

“How does the rest of the world perceive America under Obama? We're the nation that stood by and didn't lift a finger when the Iranian public was protesting their government. We voiced no support and did not try to help in any significant way, and the protest was soon quelled. We're the nation that drew red lines in Syria and watched them being crossed without a whimper. We're the nation that only uttered a few lukewarm words as Putin invaded the Crimea and the Ukraine. We're the nation that traded five of the world's most dangerous terrorists for one American deserter. We're the nation that gave away the store to insure that Iran can finance its terrorist attacks and be assured of having a nuclear device in a few years.”

Charlie Daniels (1936) American singer and musician

2010s, 2016, Letter to America's Enemies (2016)

World, Way, Support, Help

“We shouldn't discount or downplay those who are showing up because the protests overall aren't as big as we would like them to be. There are a growing number of young people in this country who are getting fed up, and they're the ones who are showing up to protests and demonstrations, and who want to fight now. We have to connect with those people to figure out where we take these movements around different issues. Movements don't just fall out of the sky fully formed.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1950) American academic and author

The fight against racism doesn't stop here (2013)

People, Fight, Country

“No one would listen to me when I tried to protest that foxhunting was cruel. And as a young boy it was hard to argue with my elders about being disrespectful, but it seemed to me that if you didn't want foxes to get into your henhouse, then you needed to build an enclosure that was foxproof. It seemed totally unjust to set foxhounds to kill foxes because human beings were too lazy to take proper care of their chickens. Whenever I tried to speak to anyone about it, I was told to mind my manners, what did I know? I was just a child. It was years before I was vindicated and foxhunting was banned in England and Wales. During the debate that raged beforehand, I was involved in researching the effect hunting had on the fox. The prohunting lobby said that they only caught old and sick animals, but that was simply not true. I examined foxes that had been caught and among them were carcasses of eighteen-month-old foxes - animals in the prime of life - too young to know how to save themselves. Another myth was that the lead dog brought down the fox and it was all over in seconds with a single bite. The truth was they ran the fox to exhaustion until its brain boiled and swelled, its lungs bled, and the fox drowned in its own blood. They were often dead before the hounds even touched them. It was the most horrific death.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

The Man who lives with Wolves (2010)

Life, Death, Truth, Dogs

“I get that I’m a little bit of an anomaly in terms of a lawyer in that a lot of lawyers don’t do the things I do, aren’t interested in the things I’m interested in. What drew me to it initially was this idea of dissent online and moving protests forward to a new generation, a new way of thinking, a new philosophy, a way to redress our grievances to the government that was unique and novel, and to have them actually listen to us about the things that are important to us. Chief among them of course was the preservation of our privacies as we move forward into the digital age, into the complete ubiquity of digital technology pervading our lives.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in The Sabu Effect: An Interview with Jay Leiderman BY RAINCOASTER on AUGUST 22, 2014 http://thecryptosphere.com/2014/08/22/the-sabu-effect-an-interview-with-jay-leiderman/

Age, Way, Idea, Thinking

“Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, and hold it the most useful quality of my pen, that it can speedily change from grave to gay, and from description and dialogue to narrative and character. So that, if my quill display no other propertoies of its mothergoose than her mutability, truly I shall be well pleased; and I conceive that you, my worthy friend, will have no occasion for discontent. From the jargon, therefore, of the Highland gillies, I pass to the character of their Chief. It is an important examination, and therefore, like Dogberry, we must spare no wisdom.”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter XIX

Wisdom, Change

“The holocaust tragedy has been abducted by Israeli strategists, with few Jewish protests, for Israel's ideological acrobatics. As Palestinian recent history has shown, no Palestinian engagement with the holocaust will be satisfactory to Israel and its supporters. Israeli demands that Palestinians recognize the holocaust are not about the holocaust at all, but rather about the other part of the package, namely recognizing and submitting to Israel's "right to exist" as a colonial-settler racist state. The Palestinian authority has given up, but the Palestinian people should continue to resist this Zionist package deal. Their resistance is the only remaining obstacle to a complete Zionist victory, one that seeks to be sealed by Zionism's rewriting of both Palestinian and Jewish histories.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?"

People, History, Support, Victory

“The Protestants say that it is the duty of every person to read, to understand, and to believe this revelation—that a man should use his reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be tormented forever. They say:—“Read,” and then add: “Believe, or be damned.” “No matter how unreasonable the Bible may appear to you, you must believe. No matter how impossible the miracles may seem, you must believe. No matter how cruel the laws, your heart must approve them all!” This is what the church calls the liberty of thought. We read the Bible under the scowl and threat of God. We read by the glare of hell.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

God, Law, Hell, Understanding

“Such rebellion is too deep and too constant to express itself in picketing, marching, sitting-in or freaking out; it is the serious, unresting protest of serious people. It is 24-hours-a-day rebellion, not intermittent, showy, status-seeking public uproar. It is rebellion as a way of life.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Prof. Robertson Davies: Courteous Conservative".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Life, People, Way

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School, Way, Boy, Nature

“The contemporary mathematical and symbolic logic is certainly very different from its classical predecessor, but they share the radical opposition to dialectical logic. In terms of this opposition, the old and the new formal logic express the same mode of thought. it is purged from that “negative” which loomed so large at the origins of logic and of philosophic thought — the experience of the denying, deceptive, falsifying power of the established reality. And with the elimination of this experience, the conceptual effort to sustain the tension between “is” and “ought”, and to subvert the established universe of discourse in the name of its own truth is likewise eliminated from all thought which is to be objective, exact, and scientific. For the scientific subversion of the immediate experience which establishes the truth of science as against that of immediate experience does not develop the concepts which carry in themselves the protest and the refusal. The new scientific truth which they oppose to the accepted one does not contain in itself the judgment that condemns the established reality. … In contrast, dialectical thought is and remains unscientific to the extent to which it is such judgment.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 139-140

Truth, Mathematics, Reality, Effort

“I am now convinced that the Reformation of the church will come from the east. In the west there is no spiritual life. (I'm speaking of the Protestant church and not the Roman Catholic church.) We have civilisation and we try to keep up culture, but we have no spiritual life. The east has a spiritual life. They know that colour influences the spirit more than black lines. In Russia there is still the notion that art is nearer religion than thinking in lines and logic. All abstract rationalising needs to be filled out with sensual thinking and feelings. In Russia there is still a strong impression of colour.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Statement on his admiration of the Eastern Orthodox traditions (1982), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 207

Life, Religion, Art, Feeling

“Governments are terrorists, but they hide their actions behind the label of nationalism and patriotism: war becomes defense; theft becomes “taxation”; slavery becomes 'conscription'; terrorism becomes 'defense.' Few people question the violations; rather, if they do protest, it is because the government is oppressing the 'wrong' group of people, and not because they regard coercion itself as wrong.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, (1985), pp. 139-140. (Chapter 17: “Who’s Afraid of No Government?”)

War, People, Question

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life, People, Books, Age

“My aversion to them…springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Memoirs from the Declaration of the War with Spain (1746)

Men, Hate, Religion, Error

“Once again, modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact. And, once again, the appropriate response is twofold. First, many many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not as literal fact, how should we take the story? As an allegory? Then an allegory for what? Surely morals could one derive from this appalling story? Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 275 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

People, World

“I felt the body I was occupying so weakened that all its organs were shutting down. I asked the way to the hospital, and as soon as I walked in I discovered the body of a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached the body and pretended I had seen it move. I protested to all the attendants that he wasn't dead and that his illness wasn't even dangerous. Nobody noticed when I adroitly breathed myself into him. My old body immediately dropped dead, and I stood up in this fresh body. Everyone exclaimed that it was a miracle, and I didn't stop to disabuse them.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Way, Dead

“The H-block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free, united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file. I have been consistently in favour of withdrawal from Ireland and to get away from the idea that it is some sort of campaign against terrorism. It is in fact the last colonial war.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Evening Standard (21 July 1981)

War, Idea, Support, Parting

“In the second and third exiles we have served as a living protest against greed and hate, against physical force, against "might makes right!"”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Preface to Idishé Bibliotek, i. 1890.

Hate

“Mass non-violent protest is predicated on the humanity of the oppressor. Quite often it doesn't work. Sometimes it does, in unexpected ways. But judgements about that would have to be based on intimate knowledge of the society and its various strands.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

'Resonant and unwavering', Interview with Stuart Alan Becker, Bangkok Post http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20080714.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2007-09

Way, Knowledge

“Although Hayek would have protested being characterized as a democratic welfare statist in The Constitution of Liberty, this is what he was. While he favored less government rather than more, government at the local level rather than national level, the provision of social welfare through private charitable organizations rather than government at any level, and the private competitive provision of government services, there was much in his work that any modern, twentieth-century liberal could support.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Support

“In one famous episode, members of the Congressional Black Caucus walked through a crowd of tea party protesters seeking a provocation. Subsequently they claimed the attendants screamed the N-word and other epithets at them. The press reported it all as fact. Andrew, noting the sea of cameras and iPhones at the event, offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could provide proof of the CBC's claims. No one came forward. That was the Andrew Breitbart I was proud to call my friend.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe (2018)

Tea, Sea

“I plan to send my liver somewhere in France, to protest foie gras (liver pate) … I plan to have handbags made from my skin … and an umbrella stand made from my seat.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

During the hoof and mouth disease outbreak in Europe
speaking to onMilwaukee.com, 2005 February 1
2005

“The true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and good-will among men, are trying to show their antagonism and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must stand forward with our voice of protest, and say that religion is defeating its own legitimate object.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London on 20th July 1870. See Universal Religion for full speech.

Men, God, Peace, Religion

“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Education, Idea, Fashion, Passion

“We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. The events that led to the Egyptian army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power. I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge. This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/07/egypt-army-morsi-tony-blair 6 July, 2013 Blair justifying the Egyptians army actions on removing Morsi. 2010s

People, Democracy, Support, Strong

“All travellers agree that protestant are both richer and more populous than catholic countries; and the reason is, because the habits of the former are more conducive to production.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book II, On Distribution, Chapter XI, Section I, p. 381 (See also: Max Weber)

Travel, Country

“As for the woman styling herself Mother Teresa, I can attest that until I wrote my little pamphlet, she had been the recipient, the beneficiary, of a twenty-five year Niagra of one-hundred percent favorable publicity in every secular, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic, or non-religious outlet of any kind at all in the media. Only by the grace of my intervention [laughter] could it not be said, when she died, that no one had ever said a single word against her; and that no one had ever pointed out that she had fawned on the Duvalier family in Haiti and said that they were the Lord's anointed and beloved of the poor.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Family, Laughter

“The ecclesiastical authorities, for all practical purposes, acted as servants of the State in the confrontation with Jesus. In one version, the chief priest protests: "Caesar is our king, we have no other king but Caesar." In the dispute over jurisdiction between Pilate and Herod, they warn: "If you release him, you will not be Caesar's friend." The ecclesiastics were, practically speaking, surrogates of the State. That is an all-too-familiar situation for chief priests to be found in.”

William Stringfellow (1928–1985) American theologian

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), pp. 65-66

“Good sense, common sense and proper process are what should rule this parliament. That is what I believe is the path forward for this parliament, not the kinds of double standards and political game playing imposed by the Leader of the Opposition, who is now looking at his watch because, apparently, a woman has spoken for too long [loud protests from the Opposition benches]—I have had him yell at me to shut up in the past!”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Misogyny speech

Game, Sense, Past

“[in a British accent] Oh, they're so royal! We're lucky to have them coming here. But the rabble undoubtedly will be violent. Scum protesters– Oh, these insane people imagining the helicopters landing and the troops– these insane schizophrenics have come to town. The rabble– I'm so glad– thank God we're elite enough to have them though. I'm so honored. [switches to Cockney accent] Get back there mate! I'll have to have you arrested and have you deported! We're protecting criminals inside, busy stealing our pension funds and overrunning the country with third world populations. Now get back, you Yankee scum! HA HA! To show you the power of the Royal Guard Brigade! And this is the scotch we've been coughing down! Look at that pumpkin-headed Yank! That's the one, Alex Jones! I want you to know, young man, we will be watching you continually while we protect the Transhumanists putting cancer viruses in our children's shots!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Alex Jones English British Accent imitates Police" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgK9ygGluk, The Alex Jones Show, 13 May 2013. 2013

God, Children, People, World

“It is true, likewise, that the English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread throughout the nation, in direct opposition not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not), that the giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible; and they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed there are numerous arguments besides, which abundantly confute their vain imaginations. But we need not be hooted out of one; neither reason nor religion require this.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Nehemiah Curnock, ed., 'The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.', London, Charles H. Kelly, vol. 5, p. 265 https://archive.org/stream/a613690405wesluoft#page/265/mode/1up (entry of 25 May 1768) General sources

Men, Age, Religion, Imagination

“It is an irony to see in some Muslim societies someone who curses God, in his daily slang when angry, go out and protest against the Danish cartoons about the Prophet.”

Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist

Yasser Harrak. 2010. "Origins of Insluting Islam in the Sunna and in Muslim societies". Annabaa Information Network. Accessed January 20, 2010. http://annabaa.org/nbanews/2010/05/243.htm

God

“Hindu society has produced many communalists. Admitted. But it has also produced men like Mahatma Gandhi who went on a fast unto death to save the Muslims of Bihar from large-scale butchery. It has produced men like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had the Bihari Hindus bombed from the air when they did not respond to the Mahatma’s call. These have not been isolated men in Hindu society, as Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and M. C. Chagla have been in Muslim society. The Mahatma was a leader whom the whole Hindu society honoured. Pandit Nehru has been kept as Prime Minister over all these years by a majority vote of the same Hindu society. “Now let me give you a sample of the leadership which Muslim society has produced so far, and in an ample measure. The foremost that comes to my mind is Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Immediately after partition, there was a shooting in Sheikhupura in which many Hindus who were waiting for repatriation in a camp, were shot down. There was a great commotion in India, and Pandit Nehru had to take up the matter in his next weekly meeting with Liaqat Ali in Lahore. The Prime Minister of Pakistan had brought the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura with him. The officer explained that the Hindus had broken out of the camp at night in the midst of a curfew, and the police had to open fire. Pandit Nehru asked as to why the Hindus had broken out of the camp. The officer told him that some miscreants had set the camp on fire. Pandit Nehru protested to Liaqat Ali that this was an amazing explanation. Liaqat Ali replied without batting an eye that they had to maintain law and order. This exemplifies the quality of leadership which Muslim society has produced so far. This…”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

From a speech by Hamid Dalwai. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1994). Defence of Hindu society.

Death, Men, Law, Waiting

“In a tribal nation, he’s just one more partisan mobilizing his troops…. Mr. Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at, Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young. In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like “feminism is cancer.” But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump. Mr. Yiannopoulos’s act collapsed this year. But the fact that it lasted so long says a lot about the right’s fury against mainstream liberalism, Mr. Shapiro said…. But Mr. Shapiro does it too. He thinks it’s easy to provoke the left, which he says has become intellectually flabby after decades of cultural dominance. It’s not good at arguing and relies instead on taboos and punishing people who violate them. That is the essence of his stump speech…. Critics say that is great red meat for his audience, but it’s nonsense. Even if straight white males are low on the left’s pecking order, they have most of the power in Washington, in statehouses, in every corporate boardroom. They run America. Mr. Shapiro says he’s about more than tribal polemics.”

Sabrina Tavernise (1971) American journalist

Ben Shapiro, a Provocative ‘Gladiator,’ Battles to Win Young Conservatives https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/ben-shapiro-conservative.html (November 23, 2017), '.

People, Idea, Thinking, Reading

“In 1945 I really believed that by the year 1952 no American could hear the name of Roosevelt without a shudder or utter it without a curse. You see; I was wrong. I was right about the inevitability of exposure. Like the bodies of the Polish officers who were butchered in Katyn Forest by the Bolsheviks (as we knew at the time), many of the Roosevelt regime's secret crimes were exposed to the light of day. The exposures were neither so rapid or so complete as I anticipated, but their aggregate is far more than should have been needed for the anticipated reaction. Only about 80 per cent of the secret of Pearl Harbor has thus far become known, but that 80 per cent should in itself be enough to nauseate a healthy man. Of course I do not know, and I may not even suspect, the full extent of the treason of that incredible administration. But I should guess that at least half of it has been disclosed in print somewhere: not necessarily in well-known sources, but in books and articles in various languages, including publications that the international conspiracy tries to keep from the public, and not necessarily in the form of direct testimony, but at least in the form of evidence from which any thinking man can draw the proper and inescapable deductions. The information is there for those who will seek it, and enough of it is fairly well known, fairly widely known, especially the Pearl Harbor story, to suggest to anyone seriously interested in the preservation of his country that he should learn more. But the reaction never occurred. And even today the commonly used six-cent postage stamp bears the bloated and sneering visage of the Great War Criminal, and one hears little protest from the public.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

War, Secret, Books, Thinking

“The contrary, literalist campaign within Christianity is actually quite recent. It developed among more or less extreme Protestants after the Reformation – largely indeed in the last century in the US. It was consciously designed as a competitor with science, providing equal certainty by comparable methods. It is thus a political phenomenon, acting in some ways like a cargo cult. It has enabled relatively poor and powerless people to use their Bibles (which the Protestant Reformers had provided) to shape a rival myth of their own. They see this as an alternative to the materialist glorification of science and technology which they have perceived – with some reason – as the oppressive creed of those in power.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

"The Abuses of Science" (2010) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jun/12/science-darwin-newton-religion-atheism.

People, Way, Science

“I too complain ceaselessly in my heart and in my words too. My very life is a protest. Against government, for instance.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

8 August 1974
The Duty of Delight (2011)

Life, Heart

“If I wished to convince an impartial Englishman of the policy of abolishing these [anti-Catholic] laws, I should bid him repair to the south of Ireland; to mix with the Catholic gentry; to converse with the Catholic peasantry…to see what a fierce and unsocial spirit bad laws engender, and how impossible it is to degrade a people, without at the same time demoralizing them too. But if this should fail to convince him…I should then tell him to go among the Protestants of the north. There he would see how noble and generous natures may be corrupted by the possession of undue and inordinate ascendancy; there he would see men, naturally kind and benevolent, brought up from their earliest infancy to hate the great majority of their countrymen, with all the bitterness which neighbourhood and consanguinity infuse into quarrels; and not satisfied with the disputes of the days in which they live, raking up the ashes of the dead for food to their angry passions; summoning the shades of departed centuries, to give a keener venom to the contests of the present age.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (18 March 1829) in favour of Catholic Emancipation, quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), p. 98.
1820s

Men, Hate, People, Age

“The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being.”

Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian

His reply after being called a heathen by John Marshman. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354

Dependency

“When I have contemplated these adjustments of business and editorial policy, it has always seemed to me that American newspapers are peculiarly representative of the practical idealism of our country. Quite recently the construction of a revenue statute resulted in giving publicity to some highly interesting facts about incomes. It must have been observed that nearly all the newspapers published these interesting facts in their news columns, while very many of them protested in their editorial columns that such publicity was a bad policy. Yet this was not inconsistent. I am referring to the incident by way of illustrating what I just said about the newspapers representing the practical idealism of America. As practical newsmen they printed the facts. As editorial idealists they protested that there ought to be no such facts available.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Way, Business, Country

“The Vigils kept things under control. Without The Vigils, Trinity might have been torn apart like other schools had been, by demonstrations, protests, all that crap.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 27

School

“Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that Bush caused many of the problems they are protesting.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Bruce Bartlett, "The GOP's Misplaced Rage" http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-12/the-gops-misplaced-rage/full (12 August 2009), The Daily Beast 2000s

Problem

“The young man [Turgot] destined for an ecclesiastical career was placed within walls carefully designed to keep out all currents of new thought; his studies, his reading, his professors, his associates, all were combined to keep from him any results of observation or reflection save those prescribed: probably, of all means for stifling healthy and helpful thought, a theological seminary, as then conducted—whether Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or Mohammedan, was the most perfect.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 167

Study, Reading, Help, Perfection

“My message to you is continue the protests, continue despite the odds, and eventually, together, we will reach that crucial number, 350.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Speech about the Maldives, Interview with Mohamed Nasheed http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-2-2012/exclusive---mohamed-nasheed-extended-interview-pt--1, April 2, 2012.

“I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universal freedom. Precisely because women saw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country. The fact that the people were against the war in Vietnam, saw us go into the street and win, made it possible for them to have the courage to go into the street and win, and the lesson that I would like to see from this is, that we must now find a way to deal with the problem of full employment, and as surely as we were able to bring about the Civil Rights Act, the voter rights act--the Voting Rights Act, I mean the education act, and the housing act, so is it possible for all of us now to combine our forces in a coalition, including Catholic, Protestant, Jew and labor and blacks and Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans and all other minorities, to bring about the one thing that will bring peace internally to the United States. And that is that any man who wants a job, or any woman who wants a job, shall not be left unemployed.”

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) American civil rights activist and gay rights activist

Eyes on the Prize interview http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eop;cc=eop;rgn=main;view=text;idno=rus0015.0145.091, Interview with Bayard Rustin, conducted by Blackside, Inc. in 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection. (1979)

Women, War, People, Education

“Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On Protestants.
Like, Totally (2006)

Religion, Home, Singing, Tea

“One of the major problems of our society is that so many people are too intelligent to accept religion, but not intelligent or strong-minded enough to look for acceptable alternatives; in the same way, many people are strong-minded enough not to want to be 'organization men', but incapable of seeing beyond an act of protest. These situations produce a sense of being 'between two stools', lacking real motive; a sense of mental strain is produced that may find its outlet in violence, or in organised anti-social behaviour.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Bicameral Critic (1985), p. 224, Crimes of Freedom -- and their cure (1964)

Men, People, Religion, Way

“People crowded into our room, they shouted, they laughed, they got worked up, they protested, they luxuriated in all kinds of utterances.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

Quote of Gleizes, 1911, on the Paris' 'Salon d'Automne' exhibition of 1911; as cited by Anne Ganteführer-Trier, in 'Cubism, Taschen, 2004
1910s

People

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
:The right to criticize;
:The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
:The right to protest;
:The right of independent thought.
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn't? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.”

Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) Member of the United States Senate from Maine

Declaration of Conscience (1950)

Exercises, Soul

“One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment, Potter.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Statement to Justice Potter Stewart on the arrest of peacefully protesting Vietnam War veterans on steps of the Supreme Court, in The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1981), p. 234
Other speeches and writings

“The philosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling of Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical part of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who have not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps were incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we Spaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots here — more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed — it is because Krause has roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has demonstrated in his Geschichte des Pietismus, has specifically Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the persistence of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant rationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain became followers of Krause.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem

People, Feeling, Flowers, Heart

“No change (Marshall replacing former SecDef. Louis Johnson, who, soon after he resigned, was diagnosed with a fatal "brain malady") could have been more welcome to me. It brought only one embarrassment. The General (Marshall) insisted, overruling every protest of mine, in meticulously observing the protocol involved in my being the senior Cabinet officer. Never would he go through a door before me, or walk anywhere but on my left; he would go around an automobile to enter it after me and sit on the left; in meetings he would insist on my speaking before him. To be treated so by a revered and beloved former chief was a harrowing experience. But the result in government was, I think, unique in the history of the Republic. For the first time and perhaps, though I am not sure, the last, the Secretaries of State and Defense, with their top advisors, met with the Chiefs of Staff in their map room and discussed common problems together. At one of these meetings General Bradley and I made a treaty, thereafter scrupulously observed. The phrases 'from a military point of view' and 'from a political point of view' were excluded from our talks. No such dichotomy existed. Each of us had our tactical and strategic problems, but they were interconnected, not separate.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

History, Problem, Thinking, Change

“Do you know freedom exists in a school book
Did you know madmen are running our prisons
Within a jail
Within a gaol
Within a white free protestant maelstrom
We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle
We're trying for something that's already found us.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Books, School, Freedom

“The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! … Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, Feeling, Cats, Bird

“There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples (Völkerruinen), the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples (Völkerabfälle) always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

The Magyar Struggle http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).

People, History, Loss, Country

“The Girvan-Vanmanjari of Dhuniraj 119 written in 1702-04 during the reign of Aurangzeb, brings out this problem clearly. The book is written in the form of a catechism between two Brahmanas discussing the correct course of action to be adopted to put a stop to the injustices of Aurangzeb. One of them advocates protest and resistance. The other is of the view that such a course would still more exacerbate the tyranny of the King, but if they cooperated with the regime, they might obtain some relief and minimise the tribulations of the Hindus under the Mughal government. Centuries have rolled by, the country has been partitioned on religious lines, and yet the problem remains as a legacy of Muslim rule in India. How to live with the Muslims who cannot but discriminate between the faithful and the infidels? Through appeasement or confrontation? Not a happy legacy indeed.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 6

Happiness, Books, Faith, Problem

“The political prisoner’s words or deeds have in one form or another embodied political protests against the established order and have consequently brought him into acute conflict with the state. In light of the political content of his act, the “crime” (which may or may not have been committed) assumes a minor importance. In this country, however, where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Light, Country

“When I joined City Lights in 1971 and started working with Lawrence, it was clear that it had been very much a center of protest, for people with revolutionary ideas and people who wanted to change society. And when I first began working at the little editorial office up on Filbert and Grant, people that Lawrence had known through the whole decade of the '60s were dropping in all the time, like Paul Krassner, Tim Leary, people who were working with underground presses and trying to provide an alternative to mainstream media. This was a period of persecution, and FBI infiltration of those presses.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09. 2000s

People, Idea, Light, Change

“The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment — social, political, or ethical — can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.”

John Steinbeck book America and Americans

America and Americans (1966)

Love, Family, Error, Exercises

“I must make a protest against the sort of exaggerations in which the noble Lord has indulged. He has described the railway launching 2,000 or 3,000 ruffians upon some quiet neighbourhood in a manner that might lead one to imagine the train conveyed a set of banditti to plunder, rack, and ravage the country, murder the people, burn the houses, and commit every sort of atrocity…they may conceive it to be a very harmless pursuit…Some people look upon it as an exhibition of manly courage, characteristic of the people of this country. I saw the other day a long extract from a French newspaper describing this fight as a type of the national character for endurance, patience under suffering of indomitable perseverance, in determined effort, and holding it up as a specimen of the manly and admirable qualities of the British race…I do not perceive why any number of persons, say 1,000 if you please, who assemble to witness a prize fight, are in their own persons more guilty of a breach of the peace than an equal number of persons who assemble to witness a balloon ascent. There they stand; there is no breach of the peace; they go to see a sight, and when that sight is over they return, and no injury is done to any one. They only stand or sit on the grass to witness the performance, and as to the danger to those who perform themselves, I imagine the danger to life in the case of those who go up in balloons is certainly greater than that of two combatants who merely hit each other as hard as they can, but inflict no permanent injury upon each other.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/may/15/papers-moved-for-1 in the House of Commons (15 May 1860) on the illegal prize-fight between Tom Sayers and J. C. Heenan. The Radical MP Colonel Dickson replied that although "He sat on a different side of the House from the noble Lord, and did not often find himself in the same lobby with him on a division; but he would say for the noble Viscount, that if he had one attribute more than another which endeared him to his countrymen it was his thoroughly English character and his love for every manly sport". Palmerston was rumoured to have attended the fight and he contributed the first guinea to the collection for Sayers in the House of Commons. 1860s

Life, People, Peace, Imagination

“How is it possible that today's academic Left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and over-regulation of student life? American colleges have abandoned their educational mission and become government colonies, ruled by officious bureaucrats enforcing federal dictates. This despotic imperialism has no place in a modern democracy.”

Camille Paglia book Free Women, Free Men

From the Introduction http://archive.is/4luev to Free Women, Free Men https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1101871814, Paglia, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (2017) Free Women, Free Men (2017)

Life, Education, Democracy, Support

“So, what exactly are these folks protesting, and how does disrespecting the national anthem and the flag of the United States of America have to do with any of this? Doggone, like the United Negro College Fund commercial used to say, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.””

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Folks, you’re missing the point about the NFL protests (19 October 2017)

“I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's second commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life, Children, Feeling, Business

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

War, People, World, Peace

“America, a humane society, ought to take pity on the persecuted descendants of another Protestant patriarchy. However, even if American immigration policy welcomed white South Africans, which it doesn't, Afrikaners would find it hard to leave. The Boers (and British) built the place. Like Heidi away from the Alps, Afrikaners tend to wilt when separated from their homeland. Not for nothing have the Afrikaners been dubbed "The White Tribe of Africa."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa
2010s, Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011)

“They went on playing quietly and waiting for Sam (who had gone back to the bedroom to seek Tommy) and for their turns to see Mother. Bonnie meanwhile, with a rueful expression, was leaning out the front window, and presently she could not help interrupting them, 'Why is my name Mrs Cabbage, why not Mrs Garlic or Mrs Horse Manure?' They did not hear her, so intent were they, visiting each other and inquiring after the health of their respective new babies. They did not hear her complaining to Louie that, instead of being Mrs Grand Piano or Mrs Stair Carpet, they called her Garbage, 'Greta Garbage, Toni Toilet,' said she laughing sadly, 'because they always see me out there with the garbage can and the wet mop; association in children's naïve innocent minds you see!'
'Oh no, it isn't that, protested Louie, Garbage is just a funny word: they associate you with singing and dancing and all those costumes you have in your trunk!”

Christina Stead book The Man Who Loved Children

'Do you think so?' Bonnie was tempted to believe. 'Mrs Strip Tease?'
The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

Children, Health, Thinking, Singing