Dissent Quotes

“In his analysis of the sublime effect, Edmund Burke termed 'horror' the state of mind of a person whose participation in speech is threatened. The power which exceeds the capacity of interlocution resembles night.”
― Jean-François Lyotard

“Critics often say that DDLJ, with its emphasis on patriarchal permission for young love, discourages dissent. This argument narrows the space for dissent by legitimizing it only in its most blatant, combative form, demanding that dissent always be obvious and 'out there' in full view of TV cameras and Twitter. So, no act of protest short of elopement, short of the most radical rejection of family, would suffice. Demanding such all-or-nothing actions doesn't account for the costs that eloping and actively abandoning their families would impose on women from any economic strata. The way we express resistance is subject to our own personal calculus of risk and reward.”
― Shrayana Bhattacharya, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence

“Minorities are always better off in a culture which protects dissent than in a culture which protects us from dissent.”
― Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

“Your slavery is their liberty, your poverty is their prosperity...Peace is their ruin,...by war they are enriched...Peace is their war, peace is their poverty”
― Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution

“ओह मैं मर जाऊंगा मैं मर जाऊंगा मैं मर जाऊंगा
मेरी त्वचा धधक रही है
मुझे नहीं पता कि मैं क्या करूंगा जहां मैं जाऊंगा मैं बीमार हूं
मैं सभी आर्ट्स को बट में मार दूंगा और शुभ को छोड़ दूंगा
शुभा ने मुझे जाने दिया और तुम्हारे लौड़े के तरबूज में रहने लगी
काले नष्ट हो चुके भगवा पर्दे की अप्रकाशित छाया में
अन्य लंगर हटा लेने के बाद अंतिम लंगर मुझे छोड़ रहा है
मैं अब और विरोध नहीं कर सकता, मेरे कॉर्टेक्स में एक लाख कांच के शीशे टूट रहे हैं
मुझे पता है, शुभा, अपने मैट्रिक्स को फैलाओ, मुझे शांति दो
प्रत्येक नस दिल तक आँसू की एक धारा ले जा रही है
मस्तिष्क की संक्रामक लपटें अनन्त बीमारी से बाहर निकल रही हैं
अन्य तुमने मुझे कंकाल के रूप में क्यों नहीं जन्म दिया
मैं दो अरब प्रकाश वर्ष गया और भगवान की गांड को चूमा
लेकिन मुझे कुछ भी अच्छा नहीं लगता है
मैं एक से अधिक चुंबन के साथ मतली महसूस करता हूं
मैंने महिलाओं को मैथुन के दौरान भुला दिया है और संग्रहालय लौट आया हूँ
धूप के रंग वाले मूत्राशय में
मुझे नहीं पता कि ये घटनाएँ क्या हैं लेकिन वे मेरे भीतर घटित हो रही हैं
मैं सब कुछ नष्ट कर दूंगा
शुभा को मेरी भूख को दूर करने और बढ़ाने के लिए
शुभा को देना होगा
ओह मलय
कोलकाता आज गीले और फिसलन वाले अंगों का एक जुलूस लगता है
लेकिन मुझे नहीं पता कि मैं अब खुद के साथ क्या करूंगा
मेरी स्मरण शक्ति दूर हो रही है
मुझे अकेले ही मृत्यु की ओर ले जाने दो
मुझे मैथुन और मरना नहीं सीखना था
मुझे आखिरी बूंदों को बहाने की जिम्मेदारी नहीं सीखनी पड़ी
पेशाब के बाद
अंधेरे में शुभा के पास जाकर लेटना नहीं सीखना था
फ्रांसीसी चमड़े के उपयोग को सीखना नहीं पड़ा है
नंदिता की छाती पर लेटते समय
हालांकि मैं अलेया की स्वस्थ आत्मा चाहता था
ताजा चीन-गुलाब मैट्रिक्स
फिर भी मैंने अपने मस्तिष्क के प्रलय की शरण में जमा किया
मैं यह समझने में असफल हो रहा हूं कि मैं अभी भी क्यों जीना चाहता हूं
मैं अपने भ्रष्टाचारी सबर्णा-चौधरी पूर्वजों के बारे में सोच रहा हूँ
मुझे कुछ अलग और नया करना होगा
मुझे बिस्तर पर सोते समय आखिरी बार मुलायम त्वचा के रूप में दें
शुभा का भोसड़ा
मुझे याद है कि जिस क्षण मैं पैदा हुआ था उस समय की तेज धार वाली चमक थी
मैं निधन से पहले अपनी मौत देखना चाहता हूं
दुनिया का मलय रायचौधरी से कोई लेना-देना नहीं था
शुभा ने मुझे कुछ पल तुम्हारे लिए सोने दिया
हिंसक सिल्वर गर्भाशय
मुझे शांति दो, शुभा, मुझे शांति दो
मेरे मौसमी कंकाल को आपके मौसमी रक्त प्रवाह में नए सिरे से धोया जाए
मुझे अपने शुक्राणु से अपने गर्भ में अपने आप को बनाने दो
अगर मैं अलग-अलग माता-पिता होता तो क्या मैं ऐसा होता?
क्या मलय उर्फ ​​मुझे बिल्कुल अलग शुक्राणु से संभव था?
क्या मैं अपने पिता की अन्य महिलाओं के गर्भ में मलय होता?
क्या मैंने अपना कोई पेशेवर सज्जन बनाया होगा
शुभा के बिना मेरे मृत भाई की तरह?
ओह, जवाब दो, किसी को ये जवाब दो
शुभा, आह शुभा
मुझे अपने सेलोफ़ेन हाइमन के माध्यम से पृथ्वी को देखने दो
हरे गद्दे पर फिर से आ जाओ
चूंकि कैथोड किरणों को चुंबक की चमक की गर्माहट के साथ चूसा जाता है”
― Malay Roychoudhury

“There are all the hidden menaces of long journeys on the way.
But we shall go.
Treat it as exile or a new beginning.”
― Osama Siddique, Snuffing out the Moon

“The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.”
― Arundhati Roy

“It takes a great degree of tolerance, and that of humility, to strongly disagree with someone, and not express your disagreement.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Stark Electric Jesus

Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops
after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French leather
while lying on Nandita's bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's
fresh China-rose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of
Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your
violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me
like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished
with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending in to your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all in to pieces for the sake of Art
There isn't any other way out for Poetry except suicide”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“What happens to a highbrow literary culture when its fault lines-along caste, class and gender-are brutally exposed? What happens to the young iconoclasts who dare to speak and write about these issues openly? Is there such a thing as a happy ending for revolutionaries? Or are they doomed to be forever relegated to the footnotes of history?

This is the never-before-told true story of the Hungry Generation (or 'the Hungryalists')-a group of barnstorming, anti-establishment poets, writers and artists in Bengal in the 1960s. Braving social boycott, ridicule and arrests, the Hungryalists changed the literary landscape of Bengal (and many South Asian countries) forever. Along the way, they also influenced iconic poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, who struck up a lifelong friendship with the Hungryalists.”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous, they were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, “I do not ask how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is sick or who is sound;” and so they ran desperately into any place or any company.

As it brought the people into publick company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They enquired no more into who, they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together, as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they shewed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they shewed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last.

Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away all manner of prejudice or of scruple about the person who they found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those who they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on the occasion and preached publickly to the people.

Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.”
― Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

“Good disagreements are the bedrock of communities. Good disagreements happen when people with different kinds of expertise and points of view talk and listen to one another, and when we try, honestly and pragmatically, to determine the best course of action for our whole community. Our differences make our decisions stronger. Democracy presumes that we can behave as one community, caring together for our common life, and disagreeing productively and honestly with one another. Demagoguery rejects rejects that pragmatic acceptance and even valuing of disagreement in favor of a world of certainty, purity, and silencing of dissent.”
― Patricia Roberts-Miller, Demagoguery and Democracy

“I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.”
― Robert Boyers, The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies

“In an article titled "The Ex-Communists," she analyzed how these McCarthy loyalists had simply switched allegiances. Instead of demanding communism as they had earlier, they now called for unconditional loyalty and cooperation in denouncing others for the sake of freedom and democracy. They still had a cause, just a different one from before. The new cause, the right cause, she continued, had a totalitarian catch to it. By turning democracy "into a cause," something that would arrive in the future and to which the present must be devoted, the present became unfree. The idea of futurity destroyed the present moment.
How could one escape this destruction of the present by fear of the future....?”
― Marie Luise Knott, Unlearning with Hannah Arendt

“ہڈ کا احاطہ کرتا ہے، ہاتھ بندھے ہوئے
پیچھے کی طرف. پلیٹ تبدیل کرنے پر
تلخ ہارگمن کی گند میں ہوا ہوا ہوا
وقت کونسا ہے؟ ڈاکٹر کاپی جج واہارڈن یا کوئی نہیں؟
میں اپنے آپ کو تہھانے بادل میں ناپسند کرتا ہوں
جہاں گندگی کی نمک پسینہ کی تاریخ بند ہے
رسی پہلے سب سے تیز ہے
اس کے بعد کمزور جکڑے ہوئے، کٹوری کی گونج کے ساتھ
جہاں پرندوں اور مکھیوں نے ان کی زوال کو دوبارہ ڈالا
میں اپنا اضافہ دوبارہ بناتا ہوں
بڑھتی ہوئی واحد ہے. الفاظ کے دانو سے غیر
جن کے پاؤں برباد شدہ کائنات کو پسند کرتے ہیں
ہر وقت زندہ رکھنے کے لئے میں نے کبھی جھاڑیوں کا سامنا نہیں کیا
ان لوگوں کا ایک خاندان جو موت کے لئے جنم دیا جاتا ہے.”
― Malay Roychoudhury, প্রিয় পচিশ - কবিতার বই

“నేను బొడ్డుపై ముదురు మందపాటి పిచ్‌లో థడ్-కిక్ పొందుతాను మరియు దొర్లిపోతాను
వినయపూర్వకంగా ఉండటానికి తడిగా ఉన్న ఫ్లోర్ షాక్‌పై వెనుక భాగంలో కట్టిన చేతులు
నేను స్పిన్ చేస్తే ముఖం కళ్ళపై లైట్లు మెరుస్తాయి
అప్పుడు లైట్లు గడ్డం మీద బూట్ లేదా రెండు కఠినంగా ఉంటాయి
నేను రక్తం చుక్కలు అనుభూతి చెందుతున్నాను మరియు పెదవులను నత్తలో నొక్కండి
కాంతి అలల మీద ఆన్ మరియు ఆఫ్ మరియు ఆన్ మరియు ఆఫ్ మెరిసిపోతుంది
ఒక వేడి మెటల్ రాడ్ మాంసం వెచ్చగా స్నిప్ చేయడానికి కఠినమైన రొమ్మును వెదజల్లుతుంది
సన్నని ఒక క్రూరమైన సమూహాన్ని కుట్టడంలో లైట్లు హేమ్
ఎర్రటి కళ్ళు గుడ్డిగా మూసుకుపోతాయి నా దృష్టి క్షీణిస్తుంది
ఎలిప్టిక్ నోడ్లో భయంకరమైన రౌట్లో తుది బ్లాక్అవుట్
ఫైట్‌బ్యాక్ కోడ్‌గా హిట్‌ను ఎదుర్కోవటానికి నా గ్రిట్‌ను సిద్ధం చేస్తున్నాను.”
― Malay Roychoudhury, Selected Poems

“Celsus did not soften his attack either. This first assault on Christianity was vicious, powerful and, like Gibbon, immensely readable. Yet unlike Gibbon, today almost no one has heard of Celsus and fewer still have read his work. Because Celsus’s fears came true. Christianity continued to spread, and not just among the lower classes. Within 150 years of Celsus’s attack, even the Emperor of Rome professed himself a follower of the religion. What happened next was far more serious than anything Celsus could ever have imagined. Christianity not only gained adherents, it forbade people from worshipping the old Roman and Greek gods. Eventually, it simply forbade anyone to dissent from what Celsus considered its idiotic teachings. To pick just one example from many, in AD 386, a law was passed targeting those ‘who contend about religion’ in public. Such people, this law warned, were the ‘disturbers of the peace of the Church’ and they ‘shall pay the penalty of high treason with their lives and blood’.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“It had all seemed so simple: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render unto God what is God’s. As the fourth century drew to its close and the fifth century opened, caveats were added, complications brought to bear. What, asked some of the most powerful preachers, if God and Caesar both laid claim to the same thing? Well, said the great thinkers of the first Christian century, in that case God took precedence. As Augustine put it, if God’s law diverged from Roman law then the Heavenly City and its inhabitants were compelled ‘to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently’. Everything – man, law, and even bureaucracy – was now to give way to God. Or rather, to His Church. And if this meant some sticky moments on earth then so be it, for, argued another aggressive Christian cleric, the greatest wrong that one could do was not to disobey the law but to disobey God.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“They fought about politics. Angelica's husband has ironclad ideas and doesn't like them to be questioned.'

'If they were really ironclad he wouldn't mind discussing them. If he gets that angry, it means his ideas are more like cheese than iron.' (Happiness, As Such)”
― Natalia Ginzburg

“The other argument [about the Iraq War] was about argument itself. It characterized any argument about policy (whether, in fact, Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and whether regime change could be effected through an invasion) as unnecessary, dithering, disloyal, and possibly even deliberately evil, since the correct course of action was so obvious. Major media outlets demonized dissent. In a democracy.”
― Patricia Roberts-Miller, Demagoguery and Democracy

“Channeling conflict and dissent constructively: During the formation of the conflict [in Mozambique], disagreement became a punishable crime and the consequences were serious. As soon as the invitation to seek what unites and not what divides was welcomed by both parties ... the possibility of disagreement and corrective feedback was paradoxically restored, making it possible for constructive tension to be recognized and welcomed back in the system. Today in Mozambique, it is clear that to say no to a policy is not treason and that dissent is not only permissible but also an effective tool for growth and development. Clearly, successful peace processes are less about agreements per se and more about how disagreement is allowed and is managed.”
― Peter T. Coleman, The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts

“In a democratic system, the medium of dialogue is the best medium for not allowing the debate to become a dispute.”
― Ramnath Kovind

“Instead, the regime that has legislated on what we eat, whom we love, what we desire and how we live has now come for our memory.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.”
― W. Frank Murphy

“The most regrettable consequence of the discontinuity in the record of American rationalist dissent is that its moral lessons must be relearned in every generation.

It is telling that even so voracious a reader as Garrison was beyond the midpoint of his life when he discovered his spiritual ancestor Thomas Paine. When your own mind is your own church, it can take a very long time for future generations to make their way to the sanctuary.”
― Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

“To chase a pretty story felt like foolishness when scraping by was hard enough, and the towering cliffs jutting up from the lowland presented another deadly discouragement. People told themselves that their lives were as good as they could ever be.”
― E.G. Radcliff, The Hidden King

“Nandu kyon bol kar bura bane? Unke nire dost baithe hain na, unke man kee bolne ko.

Why should Nandu speak and become bad? His friends are sitting there to speak what his heart wants.”
― Geetanjali Shree

“The exercise of power became a constant feature of those years. And those who disagreed with Pell on matters theological or spiritual felt thoroughly marginalised. As the 2000s wore on, it was not just a case of Pell necessarily exercising the power himself, but that he had remade the Australian Church in his image. Dissent was actively discouraged, discussion about subjects he had declared off limits was avoided. (p.115)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell

“Consensus, while comforting and harmonious as well as efficient, often leads us to make bad decisions. Dissent, while often annoying, is precisely the challenge that we need to reassess our own views and make better choices. It helps us consider alternatives and generate creative solutions. Dissent is a liberator.

So why do we punish dissent? Most of us believe that we are open to differing views. Some of us believe that we like challenges to our ideas. In practice, however, most of us dislike a person who believes the opposite of a position we hold, and we creatively look for reasons for his “error.” We tend to think of him in negative terms. He is a troublemaker who is wasting time and blocking our goals. We are quite willing to punish him, most often through ridicule or rejection.

We are continually advised “to go along and to get along.” It is powerful advice for most of us who prefer to be “in” rather than “out.” We like being accepted and valued—and we know that if we stand up against the majority, we will be “on the outs.” We thus remain silent. Sometimes we even nod in agreement, not knowing why we are nodding—because we choose not to ask ourselves what we really believe. There is a price for this as well.”
― Charlan Jeanne Nemeth, In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business

“Strange are the ways of democracy; everyone disagrees with everyone else and such dissent is considered a good thing. Stranger are the ways of dictators; once they have coerced all their subjects to agree with them, they spread their evil wings across their borders to secure the nod of the rest of the humanity. That is how dictatorships usually end. If a dictator does not aspire to be a world hegemon, he could be forever, limited only by the fact that even dictators are mortal.”
― R. N. Prasher