Pierre Trudeau Quotes

This is an amazing country, for all of its faults. My feeling is, dig in and let's try to change the world. Dissent is not only your right, it's your duty.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

A little rebellion is a good thing.

The history in our country speaks to our highest values of people who did not accept things as they are and go along with them. They resisted, they refused to accept the world as it is, they demanded it to be a better reflection of their highest dreams and highest aspirations.

Liberty lives in protest and democracy prospers under conditions of change. When we travel about the world and come to a country whose newspapers are filled with bad news we feel that liberty lives in that land. When we come to a country whose newspapers are filled with good news, we feel differently.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even tacitly take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

We're seeing the sort of liberal phenomenon of activists that are speaking out. And they have every right to do so. I think we need to respect that in this country. It's just part of the democratic process.

I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.

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

There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

The seed of revolution is repression.

How many of you are willing to go to jail for freedom?

Civil disobedients are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.

Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil.

I can raise more hell in jail than out.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

I want you to leave here with a sense of mission. Martin Luther King is waiting for you to march with him.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

Dissent is as American as cherry pie.