Good Protest Quotes & Sayings

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent. — Charles Eliot Norton

Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony." The presence of so many in church on a wintry night proved his point. "You can protest against the evil in the world only if you believe in a good God," Volf also said. "Otherwise the protest doesn't make sense. — Philip Yancey

Perhaps I may record here my protest against the efforts, so often made, to shield children and young people from all that has to do with death and sorrow, to give them a good time at all hazards on the assumption that the ills of life will come soon enough. Young people themselves often resent this attitude on the part of their elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if they were denied the common human experiences. — Jane Addams

You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish ... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering
no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much ... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg. — Randall Jarrell

She dropped miserably on the first chair she came to and sat there staring through the oriel, oblivious of Good Luck's frantic purrs of joy and Banjo's savage glares of protest at her occupancy of his chair. — L.M. Montgomery

I am an old man, and I here declare that I never knew them to be productive of any good in the worship of God, and have reason to believe that they are productive of much evil. Music as a science I esteem and admire, but instrumental music in the house of God I abominate and abhor. This is the abuse of music, and I here register my protest against all such corruption of the worship of the author of Christianity. — Adam Clarke

The first revolution is to transform the status of evaluation from untouchable to respectable , i.e., from the days a century ago when the value-free doctrine held that there could be no place for the serious treatment of evaluation within the sciences (or in the company of other respectable disciplines like history, jurisprudence, mathematics, etc.) to the days when even the National Academy of Sciences is doing evaluations at the request of Congress without protest from leading scientific and other professional organizations, and everyone will have good reasons for this acceptance. — Michael Scriven

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt. — John Stuart Mill

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness! — Samuel Beckett

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 Chandra Sen

The fact is that while there has been a good deal of discussion for and against women in business, farm women have always been business women, and I have never heard a protest. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind - and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you're going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of the New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation's Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you? ... You're going to end up killing Jews. — Walker Percy

This is what you have to learn. Don't backtalk. Don't explain. Don't protest. Don't fight it out. Just say, 'All right, honey,' and do whatever the hell you want. For example, just this morning, Mark said, 'Make tacos tonight, babe,' before he kissed me good-bye. No 'please'. No, 'are you feeling like tacos?' Just 'make them.'" She tipped her head to the side. "Now, are we having tacos?" She shook her head. "Hell no. We had tacos two days ago. I get he loves my tacos, but eff that. My friend is coming over and I just had tacos. Furthermore, I have to make the damn things. So we're having a roast. You serve company a good roast. Not freaking tacos. — Kristen Ashley

So
I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me
if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature. I can only protest, like all rakes in their shameful senescence, that I have had a good time. — Robertson Davies

you've no idea of the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things that they never would have said, and do things that they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it's 'good theatre. — Agatha Christie

God. I haven't been very good.
The metal whined in protest.
I could have tried harder. I could've been a better person. I stand before you now as I am. I make no excuses.
The beams gave, bending.
Please, have mercy on me, — Ilona Andrews

With restraint she didn't realize she had, she tore her mouth from his.
He let out a growl of protest, his eyes dark and filled with hunger. The thought of getting devoured by him had all her muscles pulling taut.
"I don't want to be with your brother," she blurted.
She'd come to terms with the fact that when she mated it might be with two males. Unlike some of her friends, she'd adjusted to that part of this culture. But she and Con weren't getting mated and she didn't want to be with anyone else. She needed that to be clear to him.
"Good." The word came out as a rumble. "Do you want to be with anyone else?"
Did he seriously have to ask?
She shook her head.
He nipped at her jaw. "Say it." A soft, dominant demand.
Another rush of heat flooded her at the command in his tone.
"No. Just you."

-Leilani & Con — Savannah Stuart

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? — Aldous Huxley

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that
the dorms and classrooms can't
accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.
When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns. — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

One must neither passively yield to fate ("God has brought it about") nor obstinately protest against it ("Satan did it"), but rather ask oneself, "How can I best use this situation for the advance of God's Kingdom?" This is a very creative question-and it is also biblical. The promise in Romans 8:28 reads, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God. — Christian A. Schwarz

She thought it funny how the poor environment had been raped just fine until there was a sufficient excess of the people who had effected the raping to produce sufficient numbers of themselves who were sufficiently idle that they might begin to protest the raping of the environment, which was irretrievably lost to the raping by that point.
And this would be the great soothing cathedral music, the stopping of the chainsaws amid the patter of acid rain, that all good citizens would listen to for the quarter-century it took them all to wire up to cyberspace and forget about the lost hopeless run-over gang-ridden land, reproducing madly still all the while, inside their bunkers listening to NPR. — Padgett Powell

Fiftey years isn't too bad. With luck you might see it happen when your a sweet,old granny,dandling big fat babies on your knee. Actully"-he held up a hand,interrupting Kitty's cry of protest-"no,that's wrong. My projection is incorrect."
"Good."
"You'll never be a sweet old granny. Let's say,'sad,lonely old biddy' instead. — Jonathan Stroud

There was one woman who had a giant sign and on it, it just said, 'America Is Better Than Abortion.' I think she meant that America was too good a place for the horror of abortion. But instead, it sounded like she had weighed both - the American spirit and getting an abortion and decided that American spirit better. I think it is a bad idea to have grammatically ambiguous protest signs. — Eugene Mirman

He gazed into her eyes. "I was never any good at saying no to you." He cupped her face and put his forehead to hers. "I was going to protest, and then give in." Aribelle smiled. "I hope you never get good at saying no to me. — Victorine E. Lieske

Look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying
yet in all the houses and on the streets there is peace and quiet; of the fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one who would cry out, who would vent his indignation aloud. We see the people who go to market, eat by day, sleep by night, who babble nonsense, marry, grow old, good-naturedly drag their feet to the cemetery, but we do not see or hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is peaceful and quiet and only mute statistics protest. — Anton Chekhov

I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response. — Conor Oberst

Theology that defines virtue as obedience to God suppresses the virtue of revolt. A woman being battered by her husband will be counseled to be obedient, as Jesus was to God. After all, Eve brought sin into the world by her disobedience. A good woman submits to her husband as he submits to God...

But obedience is not a virtue. It is an evasion of our responsibility. Religion must engage us in the exercise of our responsibilities, not teach us to deny the power that is ours...

A God who punishes disobedience will teach us to obey and endure when it would be holy to protest and righteous to refuse to cooperate. — Rebecca Ann Parker

My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say "I do not play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn't "at all a good player, in fact I'm perfectly rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth. — Robert Benchley

Sometimes a citizenry should not simply "be good". You have to leave space for dissent, real dissent. — Sherry Turkle

To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. Such a rejection is more than a political act. It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction. — David Remnick

The Tower of Babel" ...
The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others devoted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened ... " The Tower of Babel" ...
How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city ...
Plea to the Exposition Director in opposition to the Eiffel Tower, signed by artists and writers and published in Le Temps, 1887 — Carol McCleary

Hell, your kid is fucking my wife, and your wife is fucking me. [ ... ]
Not that she's any good, Zane said, looking at Georgia, and when she made a little cry of protest, he added, Hell Georgia, even Jell-O moves when you eat it. — Jennifer Crusie

I think about my own silence. Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it's fear. I guess that's why I'm so quiet and such a good whisperer, — Paul Beatty

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren't deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors - doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren't paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it. And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human. — Terry Pratchett

Of course, I'd welcome protest. Good criticism is hard to find. — Aleksandra Mir

Bolivian women sewed their lips shut for days. They threaded needles through their skin to stop their speech, to show what good speaking had done them. — Leslie Jamison

[O]ur War of the Revolution was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies. — Earl Warren

Whether for good or for bad, the Iran that ultimately rises out of the ashes of last summer's uprising will be unlike the Iran we know today, and for that we can thank the Green Movement, not another round of useless sanctions. — Reza Aslan

I say to life, "You are very hard", and I also say: "We are blind, we prefer to be blind. It is easier ... ". Life has to be hard to have any affect on us; even now we hardly notice it. Beyond that can one go? I must. I add, "We are also blind to the miracles of good that come to us. We hardly heed them, we even protest against them". Then I am left where I was, appalled by the hardness of life, knowing we are forced to be unwilling heroes. Suddenly I wonder
is all hardness justified because we are so slow in realizing that life was meant to be heroic? Greatness is required of us. That is life's aim and justification, and we poor fools have for centuries been trying to make it convenient, manageable, pliant to our will. It is also peaceful and tender and funny and dull. Yes, all that. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Our lips are millimeters from meeting again when he says, "I need to know something, and you have to promise to be honest." "I'm always honest with you," I protest. "Good. I'm holding you to that." Those gorgeous brown eyes gleam. "Did you throw the shootout?" I know exactly which shootout he's referring to. My lips quiver, so I press them together to keep from grinning. "Well?" I shrug. — Sarina Bowen

I counter whatever 'doesn't work' in love with the affirmation of what is worthwhile. This stubbornness is love's protest: for all the wealth of 'good reasons' for loving differently, loving better, loving without being in love, etc., a stubborn voice is raised which lasts a little longer: the voice of the intractable lover — Roland Barthes

Christians have an important role to play in contending that no human life is "devoid of value." We can do so through courageous protest, as happened in Germany, as well, as in compassionate care for the most vulnerable members of society, as Mother Teresa did. In both approaches theology - what one believes about God and human life - matters. The world desperately needs that good news. — Philip Yancey

I am a good Protestant, and in the full sense of the term, for from the bottom of my soul, I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done. — Pierre Bayle

The road now stretched across open country, and it occured to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong site of the road. — Vladimir Nabokov

So do you come here often?" he asked in a slightly self-mocking way. I couldn't help myself - I smiled. "see, you don't even have to answer that, because I know all the trash cans in town, and while this is a very nice trash can, it doesn't look like the kind of trash can a girl like you would normally scavenge from." I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on. "Now, the trash cans on Seventh Street, those are some very nice trash cans. — Ally Carter

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good ... — Milan Kundera

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? — Ethel Smyth

In protesting for your rights in any form you may, but it's only good, If they can understand your problems and feelings and not only to judge you. — Auliq Ice

Alas, our fundamental experience is duality: mind and body, freedom and necessity, evil and good, and certainly world and God. It is the same with our protest against pain and death. In the poetry I select I am not seeking an escape from dread but rather proof that dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously. — Czeslaw Milosz

Brooke fussed over the wounded lady as they transferred her to the pallet, going so far as to plant a kiss on her brow to praise her bravery.
"What a kiss," Portia complained. "As if I were a child."
Brooke cupped her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. He released her only when Portia's faint growl of protest melted to a pleased sigh. "There, was that better?"
"Quite." Portia's cheeks pinked.
"All right, then. Now be a good little girl, and lie still."
She swatted at him feebly as he and Denny lifted the pallet - Brooke carrying the end at Portia's head, and Denny lifting her feet. — Tessa Dare

It's my greatest success. Women did not vote in Italy until 1946. A good friend and I put together a group of women to protest this. I was very young, just a girl. We went to the Viminale [home of the Ministry of the Interior] and spoke to the chair of the ministry board. Thanks to our initiative, we got the bureaucracy rolling on giving women the right to vote. I have to thank my father for this. He was in Geneva at the League of Nations, and women voted there. He thought it was absurd that women didn't vote in his country yet. — Giovanna Cau

This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart. — William Golding

When an opponent in the gymnasium gashes us with his nails or bruises our head in a collision, we do not protest or take offence, and we do not suspect him ever afterwards of malicious intent. However, we do regard him with a wary eye; not in enmity or suspicion, yet good-temperedly keeping our distance. So let it be, too, at other times in life; let us agree to overlook a great many things in those who are, as it were, our fellow-contestants. A simple avoidance, as I have said, is always open to us, without either suspicion or ill will. — Marcus Aurelius

Liberty lives in protest and democracy prospers under conditions of change. When we travel about the world and come to a country whose newspapers are filled with bad news we feel that liberty lives in that land. When we come to a country whose newspapers are filled with good news, we feel differently. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

You love Robert, not me. You don't love Lord Stuffy, so I tried to be like Robert."
The sweet idiot! She felt like weeping again. She began to protest, but he cut her off.
"I don't drink and I don't gamble and I don't have a mistress. I'm dull. You told me so, the first time we met. So I tried to change." He frowned. "Not the mistress. I'll never do that."
"Good," she whispered.
"I'm trying to be like Robert, but I'm no good at it. I drank wine. And brandy, lots of it. I didn't like it and it made me sick. I played hazard and I lost." He looked momentarily cheerful and her heart sank. "But I didn't like that either. If I was a real man like Mr. Fox, or Robert, I'd have lost thousands."
The sadder he looked, the more her heart ached, a happy ache.
"I failed you, Caro. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'll always be Lord Stuffy," he said, and closed his tortured, bloodshot eyes. — Miranda Neville

Just so you know, I'm gonna kiss you now. You're gonna protest, and I'm tellin' you right fuckin' now it'll do no good. — C.P. Smith

O, lawdy, seems you don't got good radar when it comes to pickin' 'em," Elvira muttered.
"No, her radar is beyond not good. Her radar is also not malfunctioning. It's straight out broke," Martha agreed and I was wondering if perhaps Elvira and Martha were not such a good match. Denver was relatively peaceful. I'd never heard of riots or sieges or militant hostile takeovers of land and I was foreseeing this if these two got together and rallied the female population of the Denver Metropolitan Area as a protest to shelter all women against dickhead assholes. — Kristen Ashley

Good evening, Lady Ruby," he answered. "What are you to dream of?" he asked again with a curious expression.
Ruby's cheeks turned red as she met his warm blue eyes. Her feet felt heavy as bricks, and she did not know if she could walk. She had thought she'd never see him again, but here he was now before her.
She thought of a crafty remark. "Not of you," she answered. But quickly she wondered if her protest made her sound like a silly, lovesick girl. She bit her lip.
"I see," he said. "Well, we will have to change that." He gave her a grin, a flash of dark sensuality that sent a bolt of excitement through her. — Jettie Necole

Stock ownership in the US is very highly concentrated. [Shareholder actions are] something, but it's like the old Communist Party in the USSR, it would be nice to see more protest inside the Communist Party but it's not democracy. It's not going to happen. [Shareholder actions] are a good step, but they're mostly symbolic. — Noam Chomsky

Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all -- one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral. By claiming to be born wicked, Rockton ensures that he doesn't have to struggle to be good. He can just protest that he can't help himself. — Sabrina Jeffires