Quotes & Sayings About Protests

The task of the intellectual is not one of blending into the opaque consciousness of the tumultuous mob around him, his voice drowned in a cacophony of misdirected protests. His task is to remind them of who they are and what they ought to be. Our values are not to be taken from conduct of our adversaries but from the great heritage of our people. — Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

Activists have not been passive. For decades, we have tried every tactic to shift the course of our governments. We have voted, written editorials and manifestos, donated money, held signs, protests in marches, blocked streets, shared links, signed petitions, held workshops, knitted scarves, learn to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed vandalism, launched legal challenges against pipelines . . . and occupied the financial districts. All this has been for naught. A new approach to activism and a new kind of protest are desperately needed. — Micah White

Oh, sure," Gansey said, still cold and annoyed. "God forbid young men display their principles with futile but public protests when they could be skipping school and judging other students from the backseat of a motor vehicle."

"Principles? Henry Cheng's principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter," Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry's voice: "Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics. — Maggie Stiefvater

The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests. The heart. Carbon-based primitive in a silicon world. — Jeanette Winterson

We don't persuade our neighbors by mimicking their angry power-protests. We persuade them by holding fast to the gospel, by explaining our increasingly odd view of marriage, and by serving the world and our neighbors around us, as our Lord does, with a towel and a foot-bucket. — Russell D. Moore

There was no doubt that sooner or later we will fight. But we will fight not in the way of the dissidents' protests. We understood that we needed to be as professional as possible. — Anatoly Chubais

His last years were beset with financial troubles; he drank heavily; he wrote to Chughtai on more than one occasion, pleading with her to find a way for him to come back to India. She was surprised to learn that far from large protests and signed declarations on his behalf, many in Pakistan felt he deserved to be punished. He died on January 18, 1955 in Lahore at the age of forty two. — Saadat Hasan Manto

As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind. — William Allen White

So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has come up with is to say that violent revolutions can be avoided (and therefore, violent mobs legitimately suppressed) if 'the people' are understood to have the right to challenge the laws through nonviolent civil disobedience. — David Graeber

And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! — Upton Sinclair

Something's up,' I say, handing the phone back.
'Not necessarily,' Jack says.
'You think this is the first time Lila's been hot-headed? Seriously, dude, you do remember my sister, right? Short, blonde, impulsive as shock therapy? Stubborn as a mule who won't take no for an answer?'
Does Jack ever listen to himself?
Does he appreciate the irony of this statement? I shake my head at him in wonder.
'Hey, I'm not short or blond,' Jack protests as he catches the look on my face. — Sarah Alderson

Prostitution and robbery are two living protests, respectively female and male, made by the natural state against the social state. — Honore De Balzac

The pessimism that protests and defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism. — Miguel De Unamuno

I'M EMBARRASSED because the looting, violent protests, and law breaking only confirm, and in the minds of many, validate, the stereotypes and thus the inferior treatment. — Benjamin Watson

Tiananmen Square in early 1989 attracted many dreamers like Ma Jian, who returned from Hong Kong to a one-room shack in Beijing in order to join the student protests. — Pankaj Mishra

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. — Upton Sinclair

There was an outburst of noise and protests, and Jeremy announced I wasn't being logical, of course they wouldn't sell me, because it was illegal, for heaven's sake. Alexa gave him a look that said you're not helping, and Gil smacked him on the back of the head, and Olivia said, yes, that was the only reason they weren't going to sell me. — Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would oherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person's actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It's a no-win situation. It's a death penalty really. — Dennis Lehane

The darkness gets bigger; it's pushing at the edges of my skull, clouding my vision. I grab Evie by the hand and start to drag her inside. She protests vociferously. — Paula Hawkins

She had me from Hello," I say to Zizzy.
"What's wrong with you dude? She never said Hell. She always welcomes us with blood dripping fangs and a horde of corpses surrounding her." Zizzy protests.
"Monsters have their own way to say Hello, moron. They just need someone to get it, that this is actually hello. — Cameron Jace

But he also felt a stitch of hesitation. Did God put him in the same room with Rabin so that he could eliminate the Israeli leader and his Oslo process? Or would Amir be imposing his own plan on God? He thought about the bullets in his magazine, the hollow points and the regular rounds. Then he turned his gaze back to Rabin and watched him leave the hall; Amir had missed his chance. But he gleaned valuable information. Rabin was hardly protected. If protests didn't stop the peace process, killing him might be a viable alternative. At home, he related the events to Hagai. It was too early, he told his brother. He needed to build his inner readiness. — Dan Ephron

North Korean students and intellectuals didn't dare to stage protests as their counterparts in other Communist countries did. There was no Prague Spring or Tiananmen Square. The level of repression in North Korea was so great that no organized resistance could take root. — Barbara Demick

The "spectacular" operations of the PFLP, meanwhile, began to attract legions of young Europeans, who saw in the airline hijackings a willingness to risk everything to achieve liberation. This was a time not only of cold war, but of revolution, inspired in part by massive and worldwide street protests against — Sandy Tolan

His lips touched the back of her neck and moved along her stubborn shoulder. One hand stroked her breasts, and the other moved unerringly between her thighs; he found the most sensitive part of her and moved against her and in her until her half-formed protests turned into soft, stifled moans. The moon moved lower in the sky, tangling itself in her eyes until he closed them with surprisingly gentle kisses. Her body was the ocean and his was the wild wind
turning ripples into foam-capped breakers that soared and curved translucently before they crashed into oblivion against distant shores. — Rosemary Rogers

The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled one from around the racketeer's collar.
Tereshko is trembling with his anger. 'Now him again!' he protests, as though at an injustice. 'All they do is die and then get up and walk around again! What'sa matter, you guys using spitballs for slugs? No, don't kick at him, that'll never do it - I think the guy has nine lives!' ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

The president welcomes peaceful protests - it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that's why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm. — Ari Fleischer

I think that it's a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it's only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections. — Garry Kasparov

Theodore Sorensen wrote for [Robert Kennedy's 1968] announcement speech: "At stake is not simply the leadership of our party, and even our own country, it is our right to the moral leadership of this planet." The sentence absolutely appalled all the younger Robert Kennedy advisers, who felt it smacked of just the kind of attitude which had gotten us into Vietnam. Nonetheless, despite their protests, it stayed in the speech. — David Halberstam

Before the church responded, a lot of people would ask us, 'Are you afraid of what the church would say?' And Trey and I were like, 'They're going to be cool.' And they were like, 'No, they're not. There are going to be protests.' And we were like, 'Nope, they're going to be cool.' We weren't that surprised by the church's response. We had faith in them. — Trey Parker

Gossip, public, private, social to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence. — Kate Chopin

Animal life, sombre mystery. All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends, who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren. — Jules Michelet

Morgause laughed as she mounted her horse with some help from a footman. "I see through your protests, Merlin. You are quite amorous of me, I know it." Merlin looked like he swallowed a frog. "Lady," he said. "Wise, old lady. Please depart lest I be forced to help you depart. — K.M. Shea

I'm not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I'm going to say I'm opposed to war. But I'm also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights. — John Wooden

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — Charles Bukowski

Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt. — Saul Alinsky

What if racism is so perfect, it made you believe the boycotting and peaceful protests of the civil rights movement actually changed policies, but in actuality policies were gonna change anyway.
"Hell, let them sit whereever they want on the bus. Just don't sit with them. Let them into our schools, the teachers will still teach from a eurocentric curriculum anyway. Let them eat with us, they'll need the energy and strength to build our homes."
Racism is a perfect system with an impenetrable barrier. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Creative activity is not a superimposed, extraneous task against which the body, or brain protests, but an orchestration of ... joyful doing. — Gyorgy Kepes

Pops: How about you finish this sentence for me, Jason? When a girl says no she means ...
Justin, looking desperately at me: No?
Nana: Are you sure?
Justin, shifting uncomfortably: I'm sure. No means no.
Nana: Well look at you. You got one right. Now here's another, even tougher sentence for you to finish. Premarital sex is ...
Me: Nana! I'm so sorry Justin.
Nana: Unlike Pops, I'm not moving on. Justin?
Pops: His name is Jason.
Justin:Uh ... uh ...
Pops: While you think about that, why don't you tell me how you feel about drinking and driving?
Justin: I'm totally against it, I swear!
Nana: Methinks he protests too much. — Gena Showalter

WARREN: What should the cops do? RUTH TURNER: The police, if they behave in other places like they do here, are unfortunate tools of a power structure which has failed to understand the dynamics of protests, and not understanding anything about the people with whom they deal, have not been able to deal with the situation in any constructive way. That's why police brutality takes place, and of course, police brutality breeds more violence. I feel that, clearly, the police ought to step in to prevent loss of life and limb, but they should not be there to prevent loss of life and limb on one side only, as had been the case. At Murray Hill, where a mob rioted - a white mob, I'm happy to say - the police made no attempt whatsoever to curb them. This exemplifies the double standard of the police. — Robert Penn Warren

After the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, the Islamic regime attacked the 'humanities' as the main source of protests, the most effective tool used by the West, especially America, to corrupt and incite Iranian youth, and finally closed down all the Humanities departments in Iran's universities. — Azar Nafisi

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers. — Hugh Masekela

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate — Robert Graves

I think O.J. protests too much. Not only did he say he didn't carve the holiday turkey, but he was in the back yard practicing his golf swing the whole time. — David Letterman

It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. — John Hersey

I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression. — Noam Chomsky

Worship demands the far distances of God; it protests against the little, the near, the material. It must love but it must look up. It cannot live without the note of spirituality and universality, if not mystery. The ascension, the passing of Christ within the veil, answers this need. So does a full-robed Christianity add to definiteness of knowledge the outreach of imagination and home. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The people of midtown Manhattan, understandably, had a love-hate relationship with the FF. They loved having heroes in their midst, especially heroes as public and friendly as the Four. But the constant brawling and property damage had brought on civil suits, protests, and even the occasional death threat. Still, — Stuart Moore

The event had been organized by the International Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the "Wobblies," who had engaged in protests across America, sweeping eastward from the Rocky Mountain states, — Stephen Puleo

Racial injustice is a dangerous relic of the darkest days of history. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country. — Jon Meacham

My mother understood human nature better and never chided. She knew that a man cannot be saved from his own foolishness or vice by someone else's efforts or protests, but only by the use of his own will. — Nikola Tesla

...he wails and protests and loves me even more. And I'm humbled and honoured and touched and so fucking happy he can find this thing in me to love. — Alexis Hall

Cast by the media at the time as sporadic and less significant than the heroic, nonviolent protests in the South, the local activism that took place in the North, West, and Midwest is all but absent in the way we characterize, teach, and remember the civil rights era. In response, this book seeks to recast the visual narrative of the era by bringing the broad, nationwide struggle for black freedom into sharper view. — Mark Speltz

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry. — Heather Brooke

A strong argument can be made that Democrats are actually the greater evil, not the lesser one. Black Agenda Report (which provides "news, information and analysis from the black left") uses the phrase "the more effective evil" to describe Barack Obama. While their analysis has focused on non-environmental issues, it holds true for Obama's environmental record as well. Obama appears to be much more effective at advancing anti-environmental policies and programs than Republicans would be. One of the main reasons for this is Demophilia. If Mitt Romney had expanded offshore and onshore oil drilling, promoted nuclear power and fracking, attacked EPA rules, and pushed through trade agreements written by private corporations there would have been huge protests. Yet Obama does all these things with impunity while environmental organizations barely object. Demophilia enables the Democratic Party to get away with it, virtually unchallenged. Regardless — Carol Dansereau

It's never pretty when you leave an abusive and controlling relationship. The warden always protests when the prison gets shut-down. — Steve Maraboli

Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope . I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue. — Robert Anton Wilson

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun — William Makepeace Thackeray

I could see that troubling the waters was occasionally necessary to bring attention to the urgency of some problem. But this style of political expression sometimes becomes an end in itself and can lose potency if used routinely. If you shout too loudly and too often, people tend to cover their ears. Take it too far and you risk that nothing will be heard over the report of rifles and hoofbeats. — Sonia Sotomayor

I know you want to fuck me. And I know you wish you didn't. So how about we compromise and you can sit here and say, 'No, Nora,' 'Don't, Nora,' 'Stop, Nora,' and I'll ignore all those protests and slide right down on your cock anyway? And I'll do it because no and don't and stop aren't your safe word. So you can finally get fucked and still sleep like a baby in your big lonely bed tonight feeling all clean and shiny and virginal because, after all, you did say 'no' and that awful Nora Sutherlin just wouldn't listen. — Tiffany Reisz

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience. — Al Sharpton

Unlike the student protests in the 1960s, by using religion and multiculturalism as a cover, we brought an entirely foreign lexicon to the table. We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objection to our demands as racism and bigotry. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathisers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who were now in middle-career management posts; people like Dave Gomer. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicised religion as ideological agitation, and felt racist if they tried to stop us. — Maajid Nawaz

Author relates the reaction of an Irish village to a landowner who tried to raise rents on the land's occupants. The villagers refused to talk to or trade with the man, whose name was Captain Boycott. — Patrick N. Allitt

When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest. — Auliq Ice

It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist. — Albert Camus

When the public protests. confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizers pills of half truth. — Rachel Carson

While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support. — Jacob M. Appel

Why do guys do that?" I ask. "Name their vehicles."
"Ownership." He grins. I reach over and punch him lightly. "What?" he protests. "It's true! And it gives us something to swear when we break down in the middle of nowhere. — Abby McDonald

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history. — Lew Wallace

Rebellion is born of the spectacle of
irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. But its blind impulse is to
demand order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral. It protests, it demands, it
insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and that what has up to now been built upon shifting sands
should henceforth be founded on rock. Its preoccupation is to transform. But to transform is to act, and to
act will be, tomorrow, to kill, and it still does not know whether murder is legitimate. Rebellion engenders
exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion find its
reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere. It must consent to examine itself in order to
learn how to act. — Albert Camus

Travis ignored her protests as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, thankful anew for that little Changeling quirk that allowed him to retain his clothes and everything that was within his aura each time he shifted. Christ, if life was like the movies, he'd end up naked and penniless every damn time he ran as a wolf. No wonder Hollywood werewolves were insane with rage. Probably pissed off at the sheer inconvenience of their lives. — Dani Harper

The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated ... It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today. — William O. Douglas

Don't you think you're a little old now to be quoting The Chronicles of Narnia?' I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.
'You read Harry Potter,' Will protests.
'Everyone reads Harry Potter,' I exclaim. 'It's an institution. Besides, it's not really a kids book, it's a metaphor for the world at large. It's almost philosophical in its way. — Jennifer Gilby Roberts

Wheelchair-accessible front ramp, take a bit of getting used to, and some like the engineer never do get comfortable with them and use the less garish auditory side-doors; and the abundant sulcus-fissures and gyrus-bulges of the slick latex roof make rain-drainage complex and footing chancy at best, so there's not a whole lot of recreational strolling up here, although a kind of safety-balcony of skull-colored polybutylene resin, which curves around the midbrain from the inferior frontal sulcus to the parietooccipital sulcus - a halo-ish ring at the level of like eaves, demanded by the Cambridge Fire Dept. over the heated pro-mimetic protests of topological Rickeyites over in the Architecture Dept. (which the M.I.T. administration, trying to placate Rickeyites and C.F.D. Fire Marshal both, had had the pre-molded resin injected with dyes to render it the distinctively icky brown-shot off-white of living skull, so that the balcony resembles at once corporeal bone and — David Foster Wallace

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that's holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It's gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it's trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren't doing it in the streets." He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. "Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule - meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean. — Daniel Suarez

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists? — Ben Aaronovitch

I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like. — Roald Dahl

The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive. — Assata Shakur

A great many young men try to justify themselves and check inward protests by the perpetual self-suggestion that it is better to keep on, for the present, in questionable occupations, because the great financial reward will put them in position to do better later. This is a sort of sedative to the conscience to keep it quiet until they can afford to listen to it. — Orison Swett Marden

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves. — Alain De Botton

I was one of the key people responsible for building Facebook's News Feed. When we launched it in 2006, users hated it. There were 'I Hate Facebook' groups; random people organized protests. We even hired a security team. — Ruchi Sanghvi

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you — John Dos Passos

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America. — Bernie Sanders

In protests against the killing of Michael Brown, relegitimizing the police has taken the form of demands for police accountability, for citizens' review boards, for police to wear cameras - as if more surveillance could possibly be a good thing for those too poor to survive within the law in the first place. — Anonymous

I don't, but angels and demons colluded to wipe shapeshifters off the face of the Earth for a reason." Elise clenched her fists. "And Rylie would have wanted it like that. Any protests? — S.M. Reine

J was white, and a young white man identifying himself as J's cousin and fellow street performer has been deeply involved in the Hollywood and Highland protests against police violence. This led to an impassioned, but respectful debate among participants at a protest on December 7, over whether the movement should use the slogan #BlackLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter. While most participants agreed that "Black Lives Matter" correctly reflects the overwhelming reality that police forces in the U.S. target Black Americans more than anybody else for harassment, arrest and violence, the LAPD's needless killing of a young white street performer shows that this system will direct its murderous violence against all manner of impoverished and marginalized people. — Anonymous

If you give up every time you don't achieve the immediate gain you want, you're just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen ... You can't expect an easy victory after one protest march. — Noam Chomsky

This was the first living creature I had ever loved passionately, because he returned my affection. My love for the animal was, no doubt, exaggerated and ridiculous.I has a vague idea that in some way we were brothers, both lost in life, both lonely and defenseless. He never left me,slept at foot of my bed, was fed in the dining-room in spite of my parents' protests and he came with me on my solitary walks. — Guy De Maupassant

The unthinking glorification of digital activism makes its practitioners confuse priorities with capabilities. Getting people onto the streets, which may indeed become easier with modern communication tools, is usually the last stage of a protest movement, in both democracies and autocracies. One cannot start with protests and think of political demands and further steps later on. There are real dangers to substituting startegic and long-term action with spontaneous street marches. — Evgeny Morozov

Stumped, Ia sat there and tried to comprehend her crew's acceptance. It was possible; it had clearly happened, but . . . she had come here expecting protests, a struggle, a fight to get at least some of them to understand . . .

"Everything alright?" Harper asked her, leaning close.

"I . . . think so?" she said, looking up at him. "Actually, everything just went . . . really well. Too well. I think I may need to worry about this for a while."

He chuckled and shook his head. "Just accept it, Ia. If you said it's necessary, this crew would follow you into Hell itself, no questions asked."

"Excuse me, but I'd ask questions," Helstead argued from his other side. "Like how many demons are we taking out, which ones we're supposed to leave in place, and whether or not we're taking over permanently or just visiting, and if so, for how long? — Jean Johnson

There are all kinds of letters and protests that come from, not surprisingly, Japanese fishermen, the fishermen's wives; there are student groups, all different types of people; the protest against the Americans' use of the Pacific for nuclear testing. — Martha Smith

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty ... is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank. — Rabindranath Tagore

I grin at her enthusiasm. "Did you like the little gun-finger I flashed you after that goal? All for you, baby."
She grins back. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but you were actually pointing at the old guy a few seats over. He totally freaked out and started shouting to everyone that you scored that goal for him, and then I heard him ask his wife if maybe you knew that he was just diagnosed with diabetes, so I didn't have the heart to tell him who the goal was really for."
I break down in laughter. "Why is nothing ever simple with us?"
"Hey," she protests. "We're more interesting this way."
I can't argue with that. — Elle Kennedy

I would like to address the peoples of the world, especially the Arab peoples and the US people. Their silence over the violations against the oppressed Iraqi people who suffered greatly cannot be accepted by any fair-minded and zealous person. Therefore, all must take these violations seriously and express themselves even through peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins and protests. I urge those people to distance themselves from their rulers who support the West and the occupation forces. — Muqtada Al Sadr

I'd been declared - over my loud and sustained protests - Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world. — Karen Chance

As the Dark Lord becomes ever more powerful, your race is set still more firmly above mine! Gringotts falls under Wizarding rule, house-elves are slaughtered, and who amongst the wand-carriers protests?"
"We do!" said Hermione. She had sat up straight, her eyes bright. "We protest! And I'm hunted quite as much as any goblin or elf, Griphook! I'm a Mudblood!"
"Don't call yourself - " Ron muttered.
"Why shouldn't I?" said Hermione. "Mudblood, and proud of it! I've got no higher position under this new order than you have, Griphook! It was me they chose to torture, back at the Malfoys'! — J.K. Rowling

I went to my first civil rights rally when I was 17 years old. I was a little skinny blond kid, scared to death, marching against the KKK in South Georgia. And I have never stopped marching in protests since. Not ever. I mean, LGBT rights, women's rights, the rights of people of color ... I'm your guy. I'm going to be out there marching! — Pauley Perrette

My experience protesting with Mojave Dolphins, and the other wonderful animal activists, can be described in a few words: inspiring, motivational and purposeful. The execution of the protests is incredible; the signs are amazing, creative and eye catching. You can really feel the unity in the group, running like a well oiled machine towards the goal of liberating our captive animal friends. — Camille

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior