Dissent Quotes

Discussion in America means dissent. (James Thurber)
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. View quote
Barbara Ehrenreich
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. View quote
Learned Hand
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. View quote
Gore Vidal
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. View quote
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection. View quote
Don Tapscott
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or he angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent my self. View quote
Thomas Browne
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime. View quote
Jacob Bronowski
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. View quote
Robert H. Jackson
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect, ... View quote
J. William Fulbright
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent. View quote
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it. View quote
William O. Douglas
The first opinion the Court ever filed has a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court... When someone is writing for the Court, he hopes to get eight others to agree with him, so many of the majority opinions are rather stultified. View quote
William O. Douglas
Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies. View quote
Jonah Goldberg
If what the philosophers say be true,-that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain,-so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage. View quote
Epictetus
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. View quote
Hubert Humphrey
I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. View quote
Hubert Humphrey
The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual. View quote
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery. View quote
Woody Allen
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. (Edward R. Murrow)
A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society. View quote
Natan Sharansky
Dissent is the mark of freedom. View quote
Jacob Bronowski
That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose. View quote
Learned Hand
Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were "the people," and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority. View quote
Eric Hoffer