Gene Spafford Quotes

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those who are now possible remain possible.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Ah, but it's nice to be in the opposition, nice to be a bone in somebody's throat.

Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.

If a community decides this is how you're going to dress and these are the punishments, who are we to say different?

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally.

The protest is part of the American way of life.

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

Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize the oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all... It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.

I have the responsibility to tell everybody that I am not the only political prisoner in Hong Kong and that there will be more coming.

I believe rules are meant to be broken.

What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.

Whenever there is injustice, oppression, aggression, violence, it's standard for it to be supported by those we now call "intellectuals," but typically not by all; there is typically a fringe of dissidents. With very rare exceptions - in fact, it's hard to think of any - they suffer in one or another way; how depends on the nature of the society.

Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.

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.

We must dissent from the fear.

That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.

I do not fight with the world but the world fights with me.

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind of message, I suppose that's it.

Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application. And this resentment generally takes the form of meaningless laughter or of criticism, if not persecution.