Dissenter Quotes & Sayings

Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. It is the deepest faith we have, and the unbeliever- the blasphemer, the dissenter- will stimulate in us the most righteous of furies. — Ken Kesey

If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle. — Christopher Hitchens

Shifting the focus from the teacher to the learner will take time and training, but it will also take the willingness to 'unlearn' what so many have been taught about student learning and teacher control. We can admire this dilemma for as long as we want, but the truth is, 'the train has left the station' and the learners are on it." - Jackie Johnston, Director of Alternative and Community Education, District 112, Minnesota — Barbara A. Bray

If she were its leader. Not that she ever would be: she was born to be a dissenter within a larger certainty, she knows that. — Michel Faber

To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success. — Joseph De Maistre

I don't see myself in the role of a great dissenter and I would much rather carry another mind even if it entails certain compromises," RBG said at a roundtable on judging in 1985. "Of course there is a question of bedrock principle where I won't compromise," she added, but she had "learned a lot about other minds paying attention to people's personalities in this job. — Irin Carmon

Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian. — George MacDonald

To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism, — Gary Taubes

Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter — Rosa Luxemburg

Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter's claim ... We have alternatives to violence. — Abe Fortas

My mother is not educated but keeps in touch with world events through news on TV. — Narendra Modi

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means. — Wolfe Tone

When you have succeeded in enshrining God within your heart, you will see Him everywhere. — Sivananda

What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. — Ludwig Von Mises

Doctrines like Christianity or Islam or Marxism require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. — Edward Abbey

Our legal system, including the police, is anti-Dalit and anti-poor. The death penalty laws' wrathful majesty, in blood-shot equality, deals the fatal blow on the poor not the rich, the pariah not the brahmin, the black not the white, the underdog not the top dog, the dissenter not the conformist ... The law barks at all but bites only the poor, the powerless, the illiterate, the ignorant. — V. R. Krishna Iyer

First I have a collection of all of the albums I've ever done, on vax. — Gloria Gaynor

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse. Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget - destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness, sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding, 'Eat, drink!' It blots out all the memory of my pain, commanding, 'Fill me up! — Homer

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. — Archibald MacLeish

Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm. — Elizabeth Gaskell

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter. — William Hazlitt

If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe
without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced. — H.L. Mencken

It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no shame in impulse. — Douglas Coupland

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group? — Saul Bellow

The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce. — H.W. Brands

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing. — Bertrand Russell

The enemy - the indispensible devil of every mass movement - is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges. If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing. It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors. — Eric Hoffer

Satan intends to deceive us by getting us to take our eyes off of who we are in Christ and focus on our flaws - and then spend our days figuring out how we can hide them. — Renee Swope

More truly characteristic of dissent is a dignity, an elevation, of mood and thought and phrase. Deep conviction and warm feeling are saying their last say with knowledge that the cause is lost. The voice of the majority may be that of force triumphant, content with the plaudits of the hour, and recking little of the morrow. The dissenter speaks to the future, and his voice is pitched to a key that will carry through the years. — Benjamin Cardozo

The chief arguments that are urged against an established religion, may be used with equal force against an established charity. The dissenter submits, that no party has a right to compel him to contribute to the support of doctrines, which do not meet his approbation. The rate-payer may as reasonably argue, that no one is justified in forcing him to subscribe towards the maintenance of persons, whom he does not consider deserving of relief. — Herbert Spencer

If during the Reformation you were a Catholic who lived in a part of Germany in which Lutheranism was the ascendant religion and the ruler of the province or the region was Lutheran, to stay a Catholic, you either had to be a dissenter or you had to leave. — Susan Jacoby