Symbolic Protest Quotes

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.

We have a First Amendment right to burn the flag as symbolic speech. The Constitution protects that right. To spend time and effort on this is ridiculous.

Liberals want to burn the flag, but progressives just want to microwave it?

I am quite prepared, if we can do it without any disrespect to the Crown of England, to bring our titles to the marketplace and make a bonfire of them.

A flag is supposed to represent everything that a country does. It doesn't only represent the good things. If you burn the flag, you're burning the flag for what you perceive to be the bad things the country has done. it's only a symbol. It's only a piece of cloth.

Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation.

I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out.

Burn my Flag and I will shoot you........but I'll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag -if they do, they must be consequences -perhaps loss of citizenship or year in a jail.

Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea - I hate the government, the government is unjust, whatever.

We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than to waving one's own, no better way to counter a flag-burner's message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned than by, as one witness here did, according its remains a respectful burial.

Who personally has ever witnessed a flag burning?

I was less angry at [Carl] Armstrong, though I was angry at the people who came to his trial: Dan Ellsberg, who ordinarily I respected a lot; Philip Berrigan; the guy who teaches at Princeton still - I can't remember his name. And they were saying - well, they were saying, really, what Arthur Koestler had people saying on "Darkness at Noon." The means were unfortunate and, sadly, someone died, but the end is what is important and this was a great symbolic - something or other - sign against the war in Vietnam.

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

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

What does it take for Republicans to take off the flag pin and say, 'I am just too embarrassed to be on this team'?

I mean, how many men would have gone on to the floor of the House as Carolyn Maloney did and wear a burkha to show the fight of Afghan women.

The same liberals who want to protect the constitutional right of people like Colin Kaepernick to symbolically reject America by taking a knee were the ones quick to criticize Tim Tebow for bending a knee to pray and thank God on the field.

If the popular thing to do is to say you have to ban flag burning, even if it ultimately means we're compromising a core principle of who we are as a republic, I don't think Donald Trump really thinks that that deeply into it.

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.

I detest symbolic protest, as it is an outcry of weak, middle-of-the-road, liberal eunuchs. If an individual feels strongly enough about something to do something about it, then he shouldn't prostitute himself by doing something symbolic. He should get out and do something real.

Time's Up is finally, it would seem, activism with some teeth. It isn't perfect, however. One of the first acts of protest - urging celebrities to wear black to awards shows - reveals a worrisome willingness to keep lunging toward those lazy, meaningless and empty gestures that cheapen the seriousness of an issue.

Live Below the Line raises real money to help the world's poorest people, but it is also a symbolic demonstration aimed at highlighting - not replicating - the plight of the world's poor.

The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!