Protesting Quotes - page 3
I wanted to have these kinds of images because other Chicano artists were doing imagery that was very political, sending messages about oppression and discrimination, honoring the great muralists in Mexico, and protesting the Vietnam war because a lot of Chicanos had been drafted into the army. There were a lot of protests against the war and the draft. I just wanted to focus on the every day life that we're all very familiar with. We needed to re-celebrate that: the beautiful things that we have always known and grown up with...
Carmen Lomas Garza
Being an atheist must be like living in a closed cell with no windows. I'd hate to live like that, wouldn't you? We see them, mind you, on television today, many brilliant people who are professional atheists who say they know for a fact that it's insanity to have a God or to believe in religion. Well, OK, God bless them for feeling that way and I hope they're happy. But I couldn't live with that certainty, and I wonder about some of them: why are they protesting so much? How are they so sure of what is out there? And who am I to refute the beliefs of so many great philosophers and martyrs all the way down the years?
Anthony Hopkins
Men are likely to be not only the warriors of war but also the warriors of peace. Almost all those who risk their lives, are put in jail, or are killed for peace are men. While some of the peace warriors-Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold-are remembered, most are forgotten. Remember Norm Morrison? After years of protesting the Vietnam war, Norm doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire on the steps of the Pentagon[...] But Norm Morrison is forgotten.
Warren Farrell
Writer-activist Taslima Nasreen reminded the world with her article ‘A sign of hope - Bengali Muslims are finally protesting Mamata's appeasement politics' in the Print, on 29 June 2009, that even during the rule of the Left, minority appeasement was a given: ‘Imam Barkati of the Tipu Sultan mosque had issued a fatwa against me in broad daylight at a public meeting in Dharamtala (on 10 June 2006), in the heart of the city of Kolkata. He had put a price on my head – for anyone who would murder me. There had been many police officers at that meeting that day, but let alone arresting the imam, no one even questioned why he did something that was ostensibly against the laws of the country. Rather, I remember the police providing him with security and then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and his ministers showering him with favours.'
Taslima Nasrin
NFL players are supposedly protesting police violence against blacks in America, but the facts don't support their misguided and Quixotic quest - actually, the opposite is the case. I would love to see them protesting - actually going into the communities where they play, and confronting the problem of gang violence that has caused this uptick.
Allen West (politician)
Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform "Glory” on the same bridge that Dr. King and the people of the civil rights movement marched on 50 years ago. This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation, but now is a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status. The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago, dreaming of a better life, to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression, to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy. This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.
Common (rapper)
I think politics can seem a burden when we feel alone and powerless against enormous and impersonal forces out there in the public realm. The late years of the Vietnam War when a lot of poets were giving antiwar readings was a very crucial time for me. In the 1960s, when poetry was very much part of public life, I began trying to make connections for myself between the havoc being wreaked by my government on a small country thousands of miles away, which I and so many of my friend were protesting, and the relations between human beings within my country, especially the relations between women and men. That kind of synthesis really wasn't happening yet in the public sphere, but I was trying to make that synthesis in my poetry-which was the only way I knew how to do it.
Adrienne Rich
Cyril Chantler, one of Britain's wisest doctors, likes to give people a photocopy of Enoch Powell's book on medicine and politics and tell them that it's the best thing ever written on the NHS. Younger readers may not have heard of Enoch Powell, but he was a Tory minister of health in the early 1960s. He is most famous for his racist "rivers of blood speech," and I can remember protesting outside his Belgravia home. Could he really have written the best book on the NHS? I think that Cyril is right. One of Powell's strengths is that he was a distinguished classicist and writes beautifully, with directness, clarity, and wit: it's like reading Tacitus on the NHS. Another strength is his inability to dissimulate; the source of his catastrophic speech, his weakness as a politician, and his most famous observation that "all political careers end in failure."
Enoch Powell
I also call upon the Egyptian government to reverse the actions that they've taken to interfere with access to the Internet, to cell phone service and to social networks that do so much to connect people in the 21st century.
At the same time, those protesting in the streets have a responsibility to express themselves peacefully. Violence and destruction will not lead to the reforms that they seek.
Now, going forward, this moment of volatility has to be turned into a moment of promise. The United States has a close partnership with Egypt and we've cooperated on many issues, including working together to advance a more peaceful region. But we've also been clear that there must be reform - political, social, and economic reforms that meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people.
Barack Obama
