Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to leave the front gate of the president's ranch, we continue to be saved by brave people who risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of righteousness. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity.

Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too.

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.

Resisting is worth doing.

We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Civil disobedience is - it's no fun.

I talk a lot about justice. I'm about it. I'm also about civil disobedience.

Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.

Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built.

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

If You Want To Rebel Against Society, Don’t Dull The Blade

Disobedience is the vehicle of progress.

You will not be able to stay home, brother./You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out./You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,/Skip out for beer during commercials,/Because the revolution will not be televised.