Timur Kuran Quotes

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

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

I'm a person who's always been politically active and passionate about people's rights.

Peaceful protest is a hallmark of our democracy. It has been in impetus for social change throughout our history.

Democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle.

The fight for human rights is about speaking truth to power.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

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've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.

So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history ... It was written in Magna Carta..

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

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true.

Riot is the voice of the unheard.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

He who is the most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power is as eager after for the prerogatives of government.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces, and put them back in the image of God and democracy.

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

The Ballot or the Bullet

Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced from pressures from below.