Bob Barr Quotes

I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night.

I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.

It was a bad looking mob. It was animated by the essence of revolution.

This don't go here. [A major riot ensued.]

My poor friends, you know as much about starting a riot as the Italians know about writing a symphony.

Let us not be carried away by the undisguised agitations of leaders who virtually asked people to take the law into their own hands.

The kind of violence, looting, destruction that we saw from a handful of individuals in Baltimore, there's no excuse for that. That's not a statement. That's not politics. That's not activism. That's just criminal behavior.

Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

Now [after election] where it goes into violence, I have a zero tolerance for riots.

"This is now the twelfth day of rioting in France. They have been rioting for almost two weeks. And France has still not surrendered. That's like a record.

No one wants to see self-destructive riots because there's no future in riots.

Hunger is the mother of anarchy.

Poor people sometimes feel that they have no other recourse than to destroy the property of those who have it.

We deeply deplore the recent acts of lawlessness and violence that have brought utmost disgrace to the fair name of India and the greatest misery to innocent people, irrespective of who were the aggressors and who were the victims. We denounce for all time the use of force to achieve political ends and we call upon all the communities in India, to whatever persuasion they may belong, not only to refrain from all acts of violence and disorder but also to avoid, both in speech and in writing, any incitement to such acts.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

When the economy prospers, but ordinary people do not, it is only a matter of time before there is a social explosion.

Government violence can only do one thing and that is to breed counter-violence.

I am against revolutions. We have had negative experience with coups and rallies in the past. We remember the shooting at the White House in Moscow The new Russian protest is the most beautiful, most peaceful, most intelligent protest in the world—not a single broken window, not a single burned care or victim.

When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

If you are not willing to spill blood between elections, you’ll spill it on Election Day, and it’ll be yours.

When Americans—or citizens of any country—are faced with significant economic forces beyond their control, they struggle for answers, and often act out of frustration. The result is more turbulent politics, more strident cultural nationalism, and violence, as people seek ways to improve their economic situation … when the pie is shrinking.

Rebellions broke out, from the full-scale political revolution of Dorr’s rebellion in Rhode Island to urban violence and protest, often by out of work whites taking out their anger on African Americans or Irish Americans. In response, leaders had to come to terms with the role of force in a democracy.

The masses are principally to be feared because they fly out ever and anon into violence; and from plundering they proceed to the flat levelling of estates.

How long can we keep kidding these people? How long before they turn their guns in the other direction?