Agitator Quotes & Sayings

A man who knows a thing, recognizes a given danger, and sees with his own eyes the possibility of a remedy, damned well has the duty and the obligation not to work 'silently', but to stand up openly against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so then he is a faithless, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incompetence ... Every last agitator who possesses the courage to defend his opinions with manly forth-rightness, standing on a tavern table among his adversaries, accomplishes more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks. — George Lincoln Rockwell

Now that I am a deputy, I will cease to be an agitator. — Lajos Kossuth

The essential mark of the agitator is the high value he places on the emotional response of the public. Whether he attacks or defends social institutions is a secondary matter. — Harold Lasswell

There have always been grievances and youth has always been the agitator. — William O. Douglas

Nobody wants me as a Cabinet Minister and they are perfectly right. I am an agitator, not an administrator. — Nancy Astor

Nope, it was the Great Immortal Agitator: Lassiter — J.R. Ward

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. — Barack Obama

If I'm president, I'll be a commander-in-chief, not an agitator- in-chief or a divider-in-chief, that I will lead this country in a way that will create greater security and greater safety. — Jeb Bush

The funeral was held at St. Mary's Catherdral of San Francisco, which has the distinction of being the only church in the world designed after a washing-machine agitator. — Christopher Moore

Local white leadership was discredited in the eyes of black people, too, by their insistence on asking me, when we met to discuss the local events, usually with black people, if I had discovered who was the traveling black agitator who had come in and stirred up their "good black people." And had I discovered if there were any communists behind the disruptions? — John Howard Griffin

Agitator and the Agitar Management Dashboard lower the barriers to accountability in software development and increase the value of developer testing. — Kent Beck

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses. — Vladimir Lenin

I used Agitator on some code I had unit-tested, and it made me a better tester. As an Agitar Fellow, I look forward to the leverage of working with an outstanding organization as together we continue to improve the value of developer testing. — Kent Beck

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy. — Abraham Lincoln

Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market. — Mary Augusta Ward

Kyle, you are a mellow dude ... You can't be with an agitator. And that's what she is. An agitator. She's a Jackson Pollock and you're a Thomas Kinkade. — Genevieve Dewey

It's funny, honestly, by rights, with a lot of the stuff that's happened to me I should be running down the street with my hair on fire, but instead I want to shape things, and I want to shake things up. There's nothing wrong with being an agitator. — Rose McGowan

I realized I'm not the kind of person who wants to go with the flow and fit in. I'm an agitator, I'm opinionated, I'm a libertine and leader. — Alexis Arquette

The greatest factors making for communism, socialism or anarchy among a free people are the excesses of capital. The talk of the agitator does not advance socialism one step. The great captains of industry and finance ... are the chief makers of socialism. — Louis D. Brandeis

A cop lost his temper and rushed into the crowd to seize an agitator ... and that was the last we saw of him for about three minutes. When he emerged, after a dozen others had rushed in to save him, he looked like some ragged hippie ... the mob had stripped him of everything except his pants, one boot, and part of his coat. His hat was gone, his gun and gunbelt, all his badges and police decorations ... he was a beaten man and his name was Lennox. I know this because I was standing beside the big plainclothes police boss who was shouting, Get Lennox in the van! — Hunter S. Thompson

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. — Martin Luther King Jr.

People don't want to be bothered, if they're not being pressured to change. You have to push people. You have to be the agitator that makes the pearl. — Marlo Thomas

I've certainly long described myself as an activist. But an agitator? Well, yes, that too, I think. — Martin Burns

The lunatic populism that preceded the Pearl Harbor bombing is astonishing in its permutations, its crisscrossings. Guys like [Catholic priest and controversial radio broadcaster] Father Coughlin and [racist and anti-Semitic agitator and founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade] Gerald L.K. Smith started out as share-the-wealth socialists. — James Ellroy

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution-the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace-quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the the soul of man. — Norman Bethune

I purposely used a pretty cocky, abrasive writing style in Sex and Crime, to stir up some drama. My confrontational style quickly became the talk of the scene. Some of the things I wrote were so inflammatory, people had to vent about it on online forums. So suddenly everyone in the scene was talking about Sex and Crime, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed playing the role of agitator, and people from competing hacking crews didn't even realize that the more they bitched about the things I wrote, the more credibility and notoriety they were adding to my scene mag. Thanks to all the positive as well as negative feedback I was getting, the things I wrote actually mattered. Suddenly I was the most important opinion maker in the scene. — Oliver Markus

The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it. — Karl Kraus

The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. — Vladimir Lenin

Every great movement needs an agitator. Every leader of spiritual ideals need a John the Baptist. — William Allen White