Quotes & Sayings About Peaceful Protest

Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration. — Richie Havens

The road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to understand - though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others. — Robert Kennedy

For many Americans, the image of the police as a protection force diminished significantly during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when nation-wide television broadcasts showed members of the Chicago Police force brutally clubbing and using tear gas on young white Americans. For many, the scene was reminiscent of the days when police indiscriminately beat African Americans during peaceful protest marches in segregated southern states. — Lee P. Brown

Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means. — Arundhati Roy

The people on the streets of Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and Iran have done more to defeat the ideology of Al Qaeda than anything that the United States has done. They have shown that there is a third way, that with peaceful protest you can have an end to dictatorship and a role for human dignity, a role for your religious faith in society. — Reza Aslan

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective. — Naomi Wolf

We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. — Graham Nash

Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation ... And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. — Anton Chekhov

Every journalist loves a peaceful protest -whether it makes news, shakes up a political season, or holds out the possibility of altering history. — Nina Easton

One cannot help being impressed by the protesters. They have begun each day of the protest in Kiev in prayer and all activities are accomplished with a collective sense of respect, kindness, and an intention to conduct a peaceful revolution. — Bob Schaffer

I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle. — Nelson Mandela

Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest. — Barack Obama

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 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

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

An act of violence against any innocent person eludes moral justification, disgraces the millions of Americans and people throughout the world who have united in peaceful protest against police brutality, and dishonors our proud inheritance of nonviolent resistance. — Benjamin Crump

There is nothing more American than peaceful protest. — Russ Feingold

Technology is the penultimate chameleon, taking on the characteristics of its handler. In some hands technology is a tool of treachery, while in others it morphs into a peaceful protest. In still others, it represents the bleeding edge of freedom. — Brock N. Meeks

But this anti-war protest, is far from a success; it is just a placebo for the people. These peacemakers feel so satisfied, gratified; gay-gallant-and-gleeful. But they do not achieve anything acceptable, perceptible; or peaceful. — Joss Sheldon

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country. — Bertrand Russell