Holly Near Quotes

When my sixth grade teacher opened the class with subtle praise for the guardsmen shooting four people to death at Kent State, I'd given up arguing with her by that point. But I was very riled up inside and vowed that I would never forget that.

Did Lincoln hate America when he voted against the Mexican War? Did Mark Twain hate America when he made speeches against the Spanish American War? If you love your country you will find ways to speak out …

Flag-burning is plain wrong, and I'll stand up for free speech - even speech I don't like.

Shake any institution of higher learning, and a dozen boycotters will fall out of it.

You know, when we get to a point in this country where dissent is extremism, we've turned, I think, a very dark page in our history. And I don't want us to go there. I encourage Americans and I'm - right now, to go to these town hall meetings, to - to talk to your Congressmen, the people that you elected.

If I was afraid of being killed, I would never speak out against the government.

So I decided the only place I can speak to the world is from outside Israel.

Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam.

The Iraq War. No one took to the streets over it. It certainly would have been appropriate. If anybody even hinted we should... you were called un-American and not supporting the troops.

But why shouldn't I speak out? Don't you speak out in this country?

With the war and everything that's going on, unless you're Susan Sarandon, the best route is to keep your mouth shut. For me it is, anyway!

Our birthright under the 1st Amendment is to foster the voices of dissent.

A demonstration sometimes doesn’t stop with expressing opinion….it moves to incitement to violence and then to violence

I have trouble applying the 'whistle-blower' label to someone who just disagrees with the way our country is structured and operates.

I don't think kneeling during the anthem is such a bad thing.

Most people in protest mobs are pretty sincere and don't want to fight cops or break things.

Dissent is as American as cherry pie.

I was arrested when I was 19 for inciting a riot.

You may dislike what somebody else has said; that is perfectly valid. You may not agree with what somebody else has said. But saying something cannot possibly amount to sedition.

I applaud Chomsky's willingness to take a stand.

I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.

We, the Desaparecidos, are perfectly prepared for people to hate what we're saying or not like what we're saying.

There is no democracy without dissent.

They are people who, by and large, think the Administration's policy - and the Iranian case is a classic one - is very stupid. They can't get that view in, and so by talking to me, they accomplish something. It's a way of saying, this ought to be discussed, we got to get this out. That's a form of patriotism, in a funny way.

It is dissent from government policies which defines the true Patriot