Support Quotations
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I do not intend to offer these statements in defense of any one position or to inspire any person to action. Do not expect a single continuous view as you read through these quotations as they represent varying viewpoints, some of which may be at odds. I use this page to realize that others have overcome problems similar in scope to those animal advocates face. These people have survived and become stronger and more whole from the experience. Also included are statements concerning tactics and ideology which, considering their semi-related nature, could appeal to others. Stay Strong!
(17 Quotations)
- Samuel Adams - "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
- Samuel Adams - "The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Joan Baez - "You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when, you can only decide how you're going to live now."
- Justice Hugo L. Black - "An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment."
- William E. Borah - "No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right."
- Vera Brittain - "I can think of few important movements for reform in which success was won by any method other than that of an energetic minority presenting the indifferent majority with a 'fait accompli', which was then accepted."
- Gaius Julius Caesar - "When the swords flash let no idea of love, piety, or even the face of your fathers move you."
- G. K. Chesterton - "In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought."
- Norman Cousins - "Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of her (or his) own conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life."
- Clarence S. Darrow - "The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along."
- Frederick Douglass - "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
- Frederick Douglass - "Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
- Albert Einstein - "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower - "Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves."
- Benjamin Franklin - "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin - "It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
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Posted/Updated: 1/17/05
