Quotes about Defiance of Oppression

Marquis de Lafayette

Insurrection is the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.

Lauren Oliver

Live free or die.

Elie Wiesel

I remember those faces of people who were good I saw that. I saw a father who gave his bread to his son and his son gave back the bread to his father. That, to me, was such a defeat of the enemies, will of the enemies, theories of the enemies, aspirations, here [in Auschwitz].

Grover Cleveland

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.

Note the language “swarm of Turkish Islam” which was a classic technique of dehumanizing the enemy, especially effective when done by a humanist in poetry. The metaphor of Muslims as insects was little different from the Ottoman Islamic characterization of Christians as “spawn of the Devil” and the like. Historically, the Montenegro people fought for the independence from both the Ottomans and the Serbians who, even into the 21st century strove to have Montenegro a part of or subservient to Serbia.

Joyce Kilmer

What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead?
No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled.
Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled.

Jimmy Carter

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

Torsten Wiesel

I cannot think of a greater symbol of human resistance and courage than our Nobel laureate colleague Andrei Sakharov.

Defiance of Oppression Quotes