Quotes About Rebellion

If Abu Nidal is a terrorist, then so is George Washington.

— Muammar Qaddafi

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

— Henry Ward Beecher

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

— Westbrook Pegler

Remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

To be able to throw oneself away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman’s smile — that is happiness.

— Hermann Hesse

I am proud of the revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought...the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but the hands of God.

— John F. Kennedy

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

— Oscar Wilde

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

— Archibald MacLeish

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.  It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all.  I like a little rebellion now and then.  It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

— Thomas Jefferson

Here in America we are descended in blood and spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

— Woodrow Wilson

The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

— Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac

William Jennings Bryan compared the way a convention feels about demonstrations to the feeling of a big man whose wife “was in the habit of beating him.  When asked why he permitted it, he replied that it seemed to please her and did not hurt him.”

I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject...

— Henry David Thoreau

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

— Aldous Huxley

Anyone who takes it on himself, on his own authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

— Denis Diderot

There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.

— Hubert H. Humphrey

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest.  The laws of necessity, or self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.

— Thomas Jefferson

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress.  Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

— Thomas Alva Edison

We have petitioned and our petitions have been disregarded; we have entreated and our entreaties have been scorned.  We beg no more, we petition no longer, we now defy.

— William Jennings Bryan

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

— H. L. Mencken

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.  The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

You can’t mine coal without machine guns.

— Richard B. Mellon

Hungry men have no respect for law, authority, or human life.

— Marcus Garvey

That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace?

— Lorraine Hansberry

We are the people our parents warned us against.

— Nicholas von Hoffman

It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter.  His natural foe is the government that drills him.

— Henry David Thoreau

To be happy all the time is one of the most nonconformist things you can do...To be always joyful is not just rebellion, it’s radical.

— John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

— Hannah Arendt

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

— Abbie Hoffman

He who throws a bomb and kills a pedestrian, declares that as a victim of society he has rebelled against society.  But could not the poor victim object: “Am I society?”

— Enrico Malatesta

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations the historians will have to pause and say, “There lived a great people— a black people— who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

— André Malraux

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

— Nikita S. Khrushchev

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior.  Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

— Aristotle

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

— John F. Kennedy

If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

— Mark 3:25

Agitators are a set of interfering meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent among them.  That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.

— Oscar Wilde

The people who are the most militant are often the ones who were least involved when things were tough and dangerous.

— Andrew Young

Death is the price of revolution.

— H. Rap Brown

Oppression makes a wise man mad.

— Frederick Douglass

To make a contented slave you must make a thoughtless one.

— Frederick Douglass

Revolution accelerates evolution.

— Kelly Miller

When reform becomes impossible, revolution becomes imperative.

— Kelly Miller

Revolutions never go backward.

— Kelly Miller

Martyrs are needed to create incidents.  Incidents are needed to create revolutions.  Revolutions are needed to create progress.

— Chester Bomar Himes

Revolutions are never peaceful...

— Malcolm X

Oppressed people are frequently very oppressive when first liberated.  They know best two positions: somebody’s foot on their neck or their foot on somebody’s neck.

— Florynce Kennedy