Resistance Movement Quotes

“It doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“When Hitler marched
across the Rhine
To take the land of France,
La dame de fer decided,
‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’
Let him take the land and city,
The hills and every flower,
One thing he will never have,
The elegant Eiffel Tower.
The French cut the cables,
The elevators stood still,
‘If he wants to reach the top,
Let him walk it, if he will.’
The invaders hung a swastika
The largest ever seen.
But a fresh breeze blew
And away it flew,
Never more to be seen.
They hung up a second mark,
Smaller than the first,
But a patriot climbed
With a thought in mind:
‘Never your duty shirk.’
Up the iron lady
He stealthily made his way,
Hanging the bright tricolour,
He heroically saved the day.
Then, for some strange reason,
A mystery to this day,
Hitler never climbed the tower,
On the ground he had to stay.
At last he ordered she be razed
Down to a twisted pile.
A futile attack, for still she stands
Beaming her metallic smile.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Leaders who do not help the people must be replaced by the people.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.”
― Perry Anderson, Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas

“Greed, crowned emperor,
rules the earth with cold disdain
for harmony’s path.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“Resistance isn’t enough. If we want change, we have to get out the vote.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“[The White Rose] is relevant because it gives us an example that we can use... They are a sign of how we should strive to be.”
― Ruth Hanna Sachs

“Roots, he wrote, symbolize more than underground strong-arms. Roots are also origins, the tendrils of a sprouting seed that give rise to life.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“To argue against an ideology, you have to acknowledge and articulate it. In the process, you might inadvertently ventriloquize your opposition. This is a problem that kneecaps me constantly, a problem that might define journalism in the Trump era: when you write against something, you lend it strength and space and time.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

“Without Love, humanity dies of thirst, grasps at riches, destroys the earth through insatiable greed. Without Love, we are walking dust, dead matter stumbling from the dawn of birth to the dusk of death. Without Love, our Earth is stripped of beingness, left barren and lifeless, a pile of rocks and resources, objects to possess and control. Without Love, humanity sleepwalks as automatons, controlled, manipulated, and shoved through a nightmarish existence.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“This world does not grow from violent roots. It flowers from the seeds of love and respect planted in our hearts. It arises in people who hold the dignity of others in equal measure to their determination for justice. It emerges in the hearts of those who remember that the greatest courage is to move from love instead of hate.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Life wants to live, but more than that, it wants to love.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We shoulder the unbearable, accomplish the impossible, and endure the unthinkable by the intensity of our love.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“All that is needed is to listen. The love song of the world enters our souls through the language of life. Our touchstone of strength forms the shape of our beloveds. Courage surges into our limbs. We rise. One foot steps in the direction of change. This is the Love that thrusts the world through eternity and carries us forward into the infinity of tomorrow. It sings overhead, scouring the barriers of reality, looking for an opening.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We are the true roots of resistance, they declared, and the scraggly leaves, golden flowers, and windborne seeds.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“We should be able to stand up for our ideals and not get struck down. We should be able to protest in our streets without the need for armed protection. A world of life, liberty, and love should be allowed to blossom in our towns and cities.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Because Native American Indians are so marginalized in the historical world, we are compelled to search for tiny openings in the armor of recorded history to work resistant magic.”
― Autumn Morning Star

“You can break my bone, but you can’t break my spirit without my permission”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom

“With Love, the pivot of change emerges, the lever stretches long enough to move the world, the arc of the universe bends toward justice, the spirit of humanity soars, and the flood of life revives.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“What is a movement, after all, but the embodiment of aspirations turned into organized action by thousands and millions of people?”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“Love demanded this of everyone. To care, not just about one person, but about the whole world. To work for justice, not just for those we know, but for everyone we don't. To keep not just our loved ones safe, but also keep the beloveds of strangers safe. To treat others with as much dignity and respect as we ourselves wish to be treated.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naïveté but because they cannot help but be true to themselves”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Magnus had caught it gingerly, half expecting it to blow in his face.
The Teacher chuckled. "Don't worry, it can't do anything without fire."
The thing looked and felt pretty innocuous, actually. It was shorter and fatter than a candlestick, and not colored red like it was in the comic books or the new Technicolor cartoons that still ran at the cinema every Saturday afternoon. Magnus had no money for such things anymore, but sometimes he and Kiki- another boy who worked for the Resistance- sneaked into the theater through an unlocked window.”
― Susan Wiggs, The Apple Orchard

“The idea that a story or the mobilization of a bunch of stories is futile flies in the face of everything we now about the history of social movements in the United States. The Labor Movement, the Women's Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Movement, the LGBT Movement, the movement to Occupy Wall Street--all of these social transformations & the legislation they inspired were sparked & carried on at particular moments by tales of unrest, resistance & desire that were somehow documented & shared widely.”
― Crystal T. Laura, Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

“Y'all fucking around. From what I'm seeing, Trump will be reelected President of the United States of America. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Our words run like fugitives
from hands sodden in blood,
all anxious and frantic
trying to break free the voice
captivated in a free land.”
― Zufishan Rahman

“Our society is so hell-bent on expansion, power and effiency at all costs that the folks [who question things or suggest the way something's done is not right,] are inconvenient. We slow the world down. We're on the bow of the Titanic, pointing, crying out, "Iceberg! Iceberg!" while everyone else is below deck, yelling back, "We just want to keep dancing!" It is easier to call us broken and dismiss us than to consider that we are responding appropriately to a broken world.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / Where the Crawdads Sing / Reasons to Stay Alive

“We admire people who oppose the regime in totalitarian country and think they have courage or a "strong moral sense" or have remained "true to their principles" and the like. We may also smile at their naïveté, thinking, "Don't they realise that their words are of no use at all against this oppressive power? That they will hath to pay dearly for their protest?”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“As if a member of a timeless underground resistance movement, [Colin] Wilson has managed to sneak “living information” into a world that is unknowingly imprisoned and in desperate need of exactly such knowledge.”
― Paul Levy, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World

“When the unrepentant and undeserving powerful are against you, it binds you into a common fate, transforming you into something entirely new and uniquely capable.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause