119 Protest Quotes to Inspire Change and Empower Activism
Protest is an expression of discontent or objection towards a particular issue, often involving a large group of people gathering together to voice their concerns. Quotes about protest can be powerful and thought-provoking statements that capture the essence and significance of this form of activism. These quotes reflect the belief that protest is a fundamental right and a means to bring about social change. They emphasize the importance of standing up for justice, equality, and human rights, and inspire individuals to join forces and raise their voices for a cause they deeply believe in. Such quotes serve as a reminder that protest plays a vital role in challenging the status quo and pushing for a more equitable and inclusive society.
Quick Jump To
Famous Protest Quotes
Protest is when I say...'I don't agree with something'.... Resistance is when I ensure that things with which I disagree no longer take place — Ulrike Meinhof
To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy. — Thurgood Marshall
A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit. — Phil Ochs
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. — Howard Zinn
It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest. — Abraham Lincoln
When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him. — Bayard Rustin
If it cannot solve this problem there will be unrest. There are now about 500 mostly peaceful protests a day across China over a variety of issues. — Tim Marshall
If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander. — Mary Mcleod Bethune
In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty. — Phil Ochs
The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along. — Clarence Darrow
Revolt is the right of the people — John Locke
Revolt, for you have nothing to lose but your chains and your [refugee] tents! — George Habash
Don't be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for Justice. Viva the boycott! — Dolores Huerta
Resist. Unlearn. Defy. — Jeff Hardy
Short Protest Quotes
- Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. — Mahatma Gandhi
- One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. — Mario Vargas Llosa
- Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. — Leonardo da Vinci
- We need a real tent city in the heart of Moscow. — Alexei Navalny
- Money is of a prolific generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more. — Benjamin Franklin
- It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs. — David Sylvian
- To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- A downtrodden class... will never be able to make an effective protest until it achieves solidarity. — H. G. Wells
- The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion. — Thomas Carlyle
Vietnam War Protest Quotes
I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service. — John F. Kerry
We jumped into the protest of Vietnam before the Black Panther Party ever started, before the Black Panther Party was even thought of. In fact, it was late 1965 and 1966 that the anti-Vietnam War, anti-draft to the Vietnam War protest started at University of California, Berkeley. — Bobby Seale
President Bush's campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out. — Jay Leno
I'm not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I'm going to say I'm opposed to war. But I'm also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights. — John Wooden
I was very much a child of the 1960s. I protested the Vietnam War and grew up in a fairly politicized home. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek. I grew up among left-wing lawyers. — Marianne Williamson
By that time [1966], we did begin to get some protests [against Vietnam War]. But not from liberal intellectuals; they never opposed the war. — Noam Chomsky
I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. — Kurt Vonnegut
The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. — Glenn Greenwald
I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings. — Don Delillo
The whole thing about whether you smoke marijuana or not is so ridiculous. That and whether you protested the Vietnam War. Give me a break. Especially the marijuana thing. — Dave Barry
Nonviolent Protest Quotes
I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being. — Joan Baez
An act of violence against any innocent person eludes moral justification, disgraces the millions of Americans and people throughout the world who have united in peaceful protest against police brutality, and dishonors our proud inheritance of nonviolent resistance. — Benjamin Crump
An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment. — Mahatma Gandhi
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. — George Bernard Shaw
There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest. — Eddie Vedder
If we don't pay attention to [nonviolent protests], they are invisible, and it's as if they never happened. But I have seen first hand that if we do, they will multiply. — Julia Bacha
Within the United States especially, the often violent response to nonviolent forms of youth protests must be analyzed within the framework of a mammoth military-industrial state and its commitment to war and the militarization of the entire society. — Henry Giroux
Peaceful Protest Quotes
One cannot help being impressed by the protesters. They have begun each day of the protest in Kiev in prayer and all activities are accomplished with a collective sense of respect, kindness, and an intention to conduct a peaceful revolution. — Bob Schaffer
We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. — Graham Nash
It is time for the government of China to stop holding innocent religious figures in captivity merely for peacefully protesting China's occupation of Tibet. — Sam Brownback
We must never allow September 11th to become a time for protest and division. Instead, this day must remain a time for promoting peace and mutual respect. — Timothy Dolan
We must never allow September 11th to become a time for protest and division. Instead, this day must remain a time for promoting peace and mutual respect. — Timothy M. Dolan
As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak. — John Knowles
I'm praying for healing for our nation. For retaliation that yields constructive results. Peaceful protests. We need each other. — Tituss Burgess
The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive. — Assata Shakur
I worry that a Trump presidency doesn't show the true face of America to the world, but I think that peaceful protest all around this country, it showed to the world who we really are. — Tim Kaine
Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of “business as usual.” That is WHY it is effective. — Naomi Wolf
Protest Songs Quotes
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying. — Abraham Joshua Heschel
Where have all the flowers gone — Marlene Dietrich
I won't be indulging in anger anymore, vehemently and self-righteously singing protest songs, and expecting them to bring peace to me or anyone else. — Susan Schneider
I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything. — Conor Oberst
Labour itself is but a sorrowful song,The protest of the weak against the strong. — Frederick William Faber
After becoming famous once again - a 1976 song, "Hurricane," even marked a return to protest songwriting - [Bob] Dylan got addicted to drugs, found Jesus, left Jesus, and put out a lot of swill. — Bob Dylan
I'd love to try and teach Donald Trump how to write a song. I'd love to put him in a room with another person - someone who's protesting him at the Women's March. I'd put the three of us in a room and all write a song together. If that can happen, it proves we can get over our differences. — Nelly Furtado
Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals. — Dwight Yoakam
I suspect many readers might associate [Bob Dylan] with one of the shortest phases of his career, the time from 1963 to '65 when he wrote his most famous "protest songs," like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin.'" — Jay Michaelson
The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning. — Joan Baez
Protest Movements Quotes
The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. — Wendell Phillips
Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement -- which was only necessary because of them. — Ann Coulter
Protestant churches everywhere are gravitating toward union with the Roman Catholic Church. These religious movements are speeding the fulfillment of the prophecies of the resurrected Roman Empire. For 30 years I have been proclaiming this tremendous event over the air and in print. — Herbert W. Armstrong
'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s. — Jonathan Raban
Today women in many countries are taking part in various types of movements of protest, some of which are serious struggles for economic and social emancipation . — Kumari Jayawardena
With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk. — Sarah Waters
The use of the internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements developed...This is a different world. — Gus O'Donnell, Baron O'Donnell
Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up. — Jose Saramago
Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the "demands" of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world. — Douglas Rushkoff
I think that the most effective social protest that any artist can do would be things that come naturally and feel obvious. I think the Resist movement will continue among people who believe in science, who believe in rights for women, who believe in civil rights. — John Flansburgh
People Writing About Protest
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Phil Ochs |
55 | 326 |
 Ulrike Meinhof |
10 | 260 |
 Thurgood Marshall |
46 | 4660 |
 Elie Wiesel |
553 | 4099 |
 Howard Zinn |
222 | 1977 |
 Abraham Lincoln |
1225 | 20600 |
More Protest Quotes
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth. — William Faulkner
Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific. — W. E. B. Du Bois
Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom. — Nelson Mandela
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought. — Margaret Chase Smith
An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous. — Pier Paolo Pasolini
Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too. — Ulrike Meinhof
Protest to be effective, must be followed by resolute action and at this crisis in world history when materialistic energy aims at overthrowing spiritual energy and moral values, action needs to develop into a world crusade for the Spiritual Humanity. — Vida Goldstein
Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne strange fruit through the years. — Lillian Smith
Why can't you place a blessing like that on us?" I asked. "It only works on wild animals." "So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned. "Hey!" I protested. — Rick Riordan
What if you threw a protest and no one showed up? The lack of angst and anger and emotion is a big positive. — Jay Sekulow
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world. — Betty Friedan
General Otis is proclaimed American Military Governor of the Philippines and I protest a thousand times and with all the force in my soul against such pretension. — Emilio Aguinaldo
In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?' — Henry David Thoreau
We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I believe that if the Tribune company ever tries to close down Wrigley Field that you will have a protest from every corner of the globe. — Billy Corgan
A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed. — Mary Tyler Moore
They see a work ethic in both of us. But, they also see that my husband is more in control of his future, and I am more reliant on other sources for my career. — Jami Gertz
We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness! — Samuel Beckett
What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience? — Amitav Ghosh
It seemed like this was one big Prozac nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out. — Elizabeth Wurtzel
Part of me has always resisted the Western clichéd image of Muslim women, depicting them as nothing more than silent victims. My art, without denying 'repression,' is a testimony to unspoken female power and the continuing protest in Islamic culture. — Shirin Neshat
I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. — Emile Zola
Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life. — Stephen Greenblatt
I have never been brought up a Catholic - I mean, a Roman Catholic - we're all Catholics, aren't we? We're Protestant Catholics, whether we're from Methodist or Baptist or what. — Aimee Semple McPherson
The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America. — Bernie Sanders
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The artist is always searching for the meaning of life, his own and that of mankind, searching for truth. A system of uncertainty has entered our daily life. The pressures of mechanization and uniformity to which it is subject call for protest and the artist has only one means of expressing this, by music. — Bohuslav Martinu
In Conclusion
Protest quotes often highlight the courage and determination of individuals who dare to challenge the existing norms and systems. They emphasize the transformative power of protest in shaping history and promoting positive social transformation. These quotes encourage people to question authority, fight against injustice, and advocate for the rights of marginalized communities. They convey the idea that protest is not just a simple act of defiance, but a powerful tool for bringing about meaningful change and creating a better world for future generations. These quotes serve as a source of inspiration and motivation for those who seek to make a difference and have their voices heard through peaceful and respectful protest.
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of protest quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about protest to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of protest quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
Embed HTML Link
Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage