John Steinbeck Quotes

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I'm telling you, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you'll put a stop to it.

The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

I have busted more hippies' noses than all the narcs in the free world.

If America don't come around, we're gonna' burn it down.

We have a tendency to sugar coat the Civil Rights movement by showing arm in arm and everyone singing 'Kumbaya'. We don't really always show the resistance from the government, the resistance from the status quo, from the majority to silence the movement.

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

[On urban unrest:] The only way to get respect is to be willing to use violence.

There is a time for all things—a time to preach, and a time to fight, and now is the time to fight.

A movement that doesn't produce a backlash isn't much of a movement at all.

We will have demonstrations until the injustices that have caused them are eliminated.

We cannot have a situation where people decide to sit in places not allowed and when police remove them they say no. We can’t have that. That is a revolt to the system. Some are crying that they were beaten. Yes you will be thoroughly beaten. When the police say move, you move. If you don’t move, you invite the police to use force.

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

This non-violent stuff ain’t no good. It’ll get you killed.

Gandhi protested against restrictive policies. So did 'Guru.'

I think what's so powerful about Black Lives Matter is we're the first movement able to take on law enforcement and make it a popular discussion.

I have chosen to kneel because I simply cannot stand for the kind of oppression this country is allowing against its own people.

The Black Lives Matter movement has spawned all kinds of activism.

When Black Lives Matter started, it was polarizing.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

If some black man go out and start something, a riot or something or, I'm not going to jump in it and get killed because he's gone out and started something I don't believe in what he's fighting for or his approach.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

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

I think everybody understood what happened, why this consent decree came about after the Freddie Gray situation. There was tension on both sides.