Riot Quotes & Sayings

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev can no longer attend concerts by his favorite group Deep Purple without having to fear that the musicians will wear T-shirts with Pussy Riot written on them. — Alexei Navalny

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. — Mark Steyn

While F.D.R. once told Americans that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ashcroft is delighted to play the part of Fear Itself, an assignment in which he lets his imagination run riot. — Frank Rich

He caught her staring and waggled his eyebrows. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she worked to recover. "The minivan suits you. I think you should get one."
"Sweetheart, I already have to beat the ladies off me with a stick. If I get one of these bad boys, I might cause a riot."
"Do you ever stop?"
"I can go all. Night. Long. — Cindi Madsen

Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire? — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'
I inquire, why
'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switch
Yeah make a way to face the music like
Life savings for a mosh pit riot
Listen to a mix
Rock the tickets, higher volume
Velocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot — Criss Jami

The hustle and bustle everywhere, so many carriages and cabs at a dash, Europeans, Chinese, and natives, each dressed after their own fashion, fruit pedlars, messengers, porters stripped to the waist, foodshops, inns, restaurants, shops, carts pulled by philosophical carabaos, the noise, the incessant movement, the sun itself, a certain smell, the riot of colours - he had almost forgotten what Manila was like. — Jose Rizal

He'd forgotten just how beautiful she was.
She was wearing a plain gown the color of weak, milky tea, largely covered by a black apron. There was a smudge of dirt across her cheek, and her gilded curls were an untamed riot with a cobweb draped across one side.
She was exquisite. — Jo Beverley

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism. — Daniel Webster

No, one couldn't make a revolution, one couldn't even start a riot, with sheep that asked only for better browsing. — Ellen Glasgow

We live in a time where government is not a leadership thing, it's more a business that's out there and running riot, so I guess the people have to go out there and say stuff. — Yahoo Serious

Read, learn, apply... — Irene Riot

For why in your calamities do you complain of Christianity, unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious license unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. — Augustine Of Hippo

He almost caused a riot among the ladies; he filled all the empty space, as if someone had let a tiger loose in this world of female longing. Even — Isabel Allende

Whenever you see riot footage on TV - you know, someone throwing a brick in Pakistan or somebody throwing a fiery piece of pooh through a Starbucks window up in Seattle - you ever see anybody throwing anything underhand? I think it just takes all the aggression out of the act. — Brian Posehn

Revolutions existed in history, books were written about them, and lectures given: they were complicated phenomena, scientific, remote. While here, the riot of a week ago had turned out to be a real revolution and the shadow of death actually threatened all of us who were of the ruling cast. — Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna Of Russia

I want a riot laser," Eve snapped at Peabody. "Full body armor." She yanked a six-inch combat knife from its leather sheath and watched with glee, as its wicked serrated edge caught the sunlight through her little window.
Peabody's eyes popped. "Sir?"
"I'm going down to maintenance, and I'm going locked and loaded. I'm taking those piss-brain sons of bitches out, one by one. Then I'm going to haul what's left of the bodies into my vehicle and set it on fire."
"Jesus, Dallas, I thought we had a red flag."
"I've got a red flag. I've got one." Her eyes wheeled to Peabody. "I've got under fifty miles on my ride since those lying, cheating, sniveling shitheads said it was road ready. Road ready? Do you want me to tell you about road ready?"
"I would like that very much, Lieutenant. If you'd sheathe that knife first. — J.D. Robb

Wherever St. Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea. — N. T. Wright

Our wild boar shoot at our home in Germany is always a riot because we invite lots of friends. We spend the day out in the woods, but then we get all dressed up in long gowns to dance around in the evenings. — Elisabeth Von Thurn Und Taxis

Bind up thy words that they run not riot, and grow wanton, and gather up sins for themselves in too much talking. Let them be rather confined, and held back within their own banks. An overflowing river quickly gathers mud. — Saint Ambrose

The vice and drunkenness among the lowering laboring classes is growing to frightful excess, and the multitudes of low Irish Catholics ... restricted by poverty in their own country run riot in this ... as long as we are overwhelmed with Irish immigrants, so long will the evil abound. — John Pintard

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not. — John Keats

I love the opportunity to just let my imagination run riot! Non-fiction can be very restrictive. — Raymond Buckland

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. — Robert A. Heinlein

No one wants to see self-destructive riots because there's no future in riots. — Jesse Jackson

Riot is the voice of the unheard. — Maxine Waters

Backed into a corner, the poor can riot, but the rich start war. — Stefan Petrucha

I want to scream because no matter how much I scream, no one will listen. — Sara Marcus

When the earth gave birth to this tree, There came no sound: A green shoot thrust In silence from the ground. Our births don't come so quiet - Most lives run riot - But the bud opens silently, And flower gives way to fruit. So must we search For the stillness within the tree, The silence within the root. — Ruskin Bond

When the city burns down and people are shot dead, people think of a riot. — Allan Dare Pearce

One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a "personal shopper" program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers' desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history's first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten. — John Scalzi

Maybe PTSD really is triggered by a single incident, a stressor, as it's known in the psychiatric community, and maybe the attack at Al-Waleed was that stressor for me, but as I have learned in the intervening years, I was not damaged by that moment alone. In fact, while there are specific memories that resurface with some frequency, like the suicide bomber in Sinjar or the order riot at Al-Waleed, I find myself most traumatized by the overall experience of being in a combat zone like Iraq, where you are always surrounded by war but rarely aware of when or how violence will arrive. Like so many of my fellow veterans, I understand now how that it is the daily adrenaline rush of a war without front lines or uniforms, rather than the infrequent bursts of bloody violence, that ultimately damages the modern warrior's mind. — Luis Carlos Montalvan

I thank Pussy Riot for standing firmly in their belief for Freedom of Expression, and making all women of the world proud to be women. — Yoko Ono

Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale. — John Waters

Give me those days with heart in riot, The depths of bliss that touched on pain, The force of hate, and love's disquiet- Ah, give me back my youth again! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. — Jack Kerouac

An ambassador should study the welfare of his country, and not spend his time in feasting and riot. — Xenocrates

When is the army getting here?" "Never," he said. "Well . . . One riot, one Ranger." "Sure. Unless you're the one Ranger. — Philipp Meyer

To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force. — Martin Luther King Jr.

we should have been on top of that. we should have closed it down quick and clean, before anyone knew. in and out. that mess is going to be in the western mail tomorrow, gwen. mystory riot . deaths. we can't paper over it. fast bug out. no time to wipe memories or fake deaths. just a big old mess. — Dan Abnett

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning. — Richard M. Nixon

Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement
which was only necessary because of them. — Ann Coulter

Betty White is a riot. She is a good time! That is the bottom line: Betty White is a good time. She is really an incredible woman. She is so kind. She doesn't have one mean bone in her body, and she is the funniest woman in the room always. And you'll never hear one complaint from her. — Odette Annable

I'll be fine. My fear will keep me warm."
She laughed. I think it was the first time I'd heard her laugh, and I looked at her in surprise.
"You're funny," she said.
"Oh yeah, I'm a laughing riot. — Andrew Klavan

It was about a year ago when I first made contact with members of the British Foreign Office. I volunteered my services and privileged information to a foreign power. Which is effectively treason, or would be, except that I regard it as pure patriotism. You see, Clara, I no longer recognize the Germany I love. I see these brutes strong-arming a small nation like Austria, and now threatening Czechoslovakia, because they can and because no one will stop them. I see them running riot with the rule of law - Germany, whose legal system is the greatest in the world, which has always stood for justice and right. And when I see this gang of thugs flooding the streets of my beloved country with tides of blood, I feel hatred swelling inside me. Damn Himmler and Heydrich and all the other sadists. I hate this false Germany, as much as I love the real Germany. And I intend to do something about it. — Jane Thynne

Ironically, he'd yet to leave a good impression. First he'd spilled soda on her, next she'd seen him almost involved in a riot, and then this morning she'd believed him to be either lazy or an idiot. — Nicholas Sparks

Weyler, the brute, the devastator of haciendas, and the outrager of women . . . is pitiless, cold, an exterminator of men," ran one such account. "There is nothing to prevent his carnal, animal brain from running riot with itself in inventing tortures and infamies of bloody debauchery. — Stephen Kinzer

And, he added with a laugh, you don't ever notice your oxygen until it's gone: something goes wrong with the HVAC, even for fifteen minutes, and people are ready to riot. — Teju Cole

N the 21st century, we
don't need to march against size zero models, risible pornography,
lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don't need to riot, or go on hunger
strike. There's no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a
donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute,
and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. People
fancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles. — Caitlin Moran

Your brain sends out vibrations all the time, and your thoughts affect your life and other people's. They pick up these thoughts and get changed by them. That's why, say, a pacifist gets caught up in a riot situation. It's a field of vibrations - you can 'feel' someone else's thoughts when close to them. — Bruce Lipton

Everybody talks about foul dens and filthy slums in which crime can run riot; but it's just the other way. They are called foul, not because crimes are committed, but because crimes are discovered. It's in the neat, spotless, clean and tidy places that crime can run riot; no mud to make footprints; no dregs to contain poison; kind servants washing out all traces of the murder; and the murderer killing and cremating six wives and all for want of a little Christian dirt. — G.K. Chesterton

I'd just turned 50, weighed 285, and my doctor had read me the riot act about my health. — Daniel Baldwin

Patriotism. I'm uncomfortable with any word that starts with a pat, ends in an ism and has a riot in the middle. — Ashok K. Banker

It also means I could dump what I learned about the Riot onto Pigpen and he'd once again shut me out. — Katie McGarry

Sunflowers and seashells and logarithmic spirals (said Kerewin); sweep of galaxies and the singing curve of the universe (said Kerewin); the oscilating wave thrumming in the nothingness of every atom's heart (said Kerewin); did you think I could build a square house? So the round shell house holds them all in its spiralling embrace. Noise and riot, peace and quiet, all is music in this sphere. — Keri Hulme

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleas'd to the last he crops the flow'ry food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. — Alexander Pope

It's pretty easy in theatre. The comedy's either physical or verbal, and you're looking at the whole frame at once. But TV executives want close-ups. I keep telling them to look at Preston Sturges' movies. He'll do a whole scene without a cut in it, and it's a riot. — Don Scardino

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet. — Samuel Hoffenstein

I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally. — John Foster Dulles

The creatures of the sea hold special mystery, and they are among the most exciting, graceful, and beautiful on Earth. Just consider the living riot of a coral reef, the beauty of an albatross, the awesome power of a giant turtle, the grace of a dolphin. Now multiply that by the millions of creatures in the sea. Wow! — Carl Safina

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row. — Bob Dylan

A small proportion to be spent on production, the rest for wine and senseless riot. — Stephen Fry

I think Pussy Riot is amazing. I'm honored that they were inspired by riot grrl, and obviously they're making history around the world. — Corin Tucker

Riots are the voices of the unheard. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It's funny because my life is full of this:

you think you're escaping, until you run into yourself.

Twenty-three years later it turns out that the longest way round is the shortest way home,

and I've been running in circles since the get-go.

What a riot, huh? — Changdictator

Eve: All this riot and uproar, V ... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?
V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means "without leaders", not "without order". With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order ... this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course ... This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos. — Alan Moore

You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available. — Harold H. Greene

Not that this woman would need chains to capture a man's attention under normal circumstances. Her milky skin,soft eyes,and that mad riot of reddish-gold corkscrew curls that gave her a pixie-like appearance would see to the task. — Karen Witemeyer

Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot. — Vera Nazarian

Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her! — Sydney Smith

Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual - in his phrase, "someone who reads books" - the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant. — Steven Pressfield

What I'm asking is will watching The Discovery
Channel with my young black boy instead
of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests
riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him
from harm? — Jennifer Givhan

I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers. — Pat Conroy

We were born ahead of our time. Don't forget that the riot-grrl scene had a lot to do with making The Slits a legend, and that didn't happen until the early '90s. We couldn't get together before then, because the legend hadn't been built yet. In the 2000s, we've become bigger than life in that way. It's become really important for The Slits to be here now, but idealistically, we should have done it in the '90s. — Ari Up

We were totally high and we had Quiet Riot play at our after-show party at the Dragonfly. I think we reunited them, just like we did W.A.S.P. We take sole responsibility for the return of retro heavy metal, and I'm ashamed. But — Marilyn Manson

I got kicked out in grade school because I staged a riot because I wanted more library time. — Bitsie Tulloch

The Eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are never lazy. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharine the Seconds, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamour, and desperation. If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of domestic molehills; and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with Mrs Jones about the shape of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the nosier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

People don't riot for no reason. — Ann Leckie

My characters still talk the way normal people talk. They argue, they are sarcastic with each other, they joke around. I usually end up with one outrageous minor character in each book that people just rave about. We all have that one friend who says and does things that are a riot. A character like that is the salt in the soup: you want just enough to bring everything to life. — Dan Alatorre

Just say anything without even caring if it is true. That is how riots start. — Colin Flaherty

The first person who throws the rock is a lot more radical than a hundredth person.By the time the riot has attracted a hundred people, you don't have to be nearly as much of a daredevil or a hothead or committed or any of those things to want to engage in a riot. — Malcolm Gladwell

The party had all the best qualities of a riot and a night on the barricades. — John Steinbeck

For tech, I like the 'DailySearchCast', 'TWiT' and anything Veronica Belmont does on CNET. I think Perez Hilton is a riot, and the rest of my consumption is by people: Folks like Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, Mark Cuban, Brian Alvey, Jeff Jarvis, Xeni Jardin, etc. — Jason Calacanis

Burn, Hollywood, burn, I smell a riot goin' on,
First they're guilty, now they're gone! — Chuck D

The only way to tell off an asshole was face-to-face and to look fantastic doing it. So, here she was, with perfect makeup, hair done in a riot of waves that had taken a ridiculously long time to create, and a brand new screw you and the horse you rode in on dress laid out on her bed. — Roberta Pearce

Soccer matches in Europe have riot police. Metal is just people sloshing around drunk and sloppy and having fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is a great outlet for aggression. — Chris Reifert

We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough. — Jerome Cavanagh

I can't believe that OMON [Russia's riot police] would hit a girl. I simply can't imagine it. — Vladimir Putin

Miss Cordelia thought she had never seen anybody so much like an incarnate smile before. Smiles of all kinds seemed literally to riot over his ruddy face and in and out of his eyes and around the corners of his mouth. — L.M. Montgomery

Overreacting as usual," Bosch said. "One fire and they're all there, showing the flames. You know what that does? That's like throwing gasoline on it. It will spread now. People will see that in their living rooms and go outside to see what is happening. Groups will form, things will be said and people won't be able to back down from their anger. One thing will lead to another and we'll have our media-manufactured riot. — Michael Connelly

The cause of the riots were the rioters — Dan Quayle

The challenging of repression by a new generation of activists - from Malala Yousafzai to Pussy Riot - across the globe reminded us how many women are still fighting for basic human rights. Our great-grandmothers' struggle in all its shocking detail seemed so relevant. — Sarah Gavron

If you love a flower which happens to be on a star, it is sweet at night to gaze at the sky. All the stars are a riot of flowers. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Special circumstances." She surveyed him for a long moment, her brows knitting together. "Murder?" His grin grew. "Thank you, but no. I started a riot on the yard." He adjusted his collar, before adding, "We were protesting the soap. — Marissa Meyer

Love can be eternal but you are immortal. — Raj Singh

There's only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family, for everything else you need a plan. — Groucho Marx

Lovegood had got out The Quibbler again. Meanwhile, at the Hufflepuff table Ernie Macmillan was one of the few still staring at Professor Umbridge, but he was glassy-eyed and Harry was sure he was only pretending to listen in an attempt to live up to the new prefect's badge gleaming on his chest. Professor Umbridge did not seem to notice the restlessness of her audience. Harry had the impression that a full-scale riot could have broken out under her nose and she would have ploughed on with her speech. The teachers, however, were still listening very attentively, and Hermione seemed to be drinking in every word Umbridge spoke, though, judging by her — J.K. Rowling

Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next. — Diane Ackerman

Still, for what Androma did to him, he should hate her, should want her dead.
But seeing her before him, melting into rage and riot, her glowing grey eyes reflecting the electricity that swam around her swords...
Godstars, she was magnificent, a creature that deserved to release her wrath on the world. It would be worth every drop of blood about to be shed to bring her to Cyprian's feet. — Sasha Alsberg