Richard Belzer Quotes

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority!

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

Censors, the whole idea of it, is so childish. You feel like you're talking to hall monitors in school again.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.

If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.

I'm such a Goody Two-shoes, but I get a vicarious thrill at someone sticking it to the Man.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

That which is given in submission becomes a medium of defiance.

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.

You ask me, brother, why am I in here. Brother, why are you not in here?

Attempts to run the world generate resistance.

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.