Dissidents Quotes

Stupidity is not a crime.

— Alexei Navalny

“What good does it do you to love?”

— Trisha Leigh

Your rights matter, because you never know when you're going to need them.

— Edward Snowden

“Almost as a rule, political dissidents were writers.”

— Dejan Stojanovic

There were no dissidents then in the USSR because they were all killed.

— Natan Sharansky

“The truth hurts, sometimes, I suppose. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be known.”

— Trisha Leigh

I don't believe in professional dissidents. I think it's just a phase, like adolescence.

— Aung San Suu Kyi

In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.

— Nelson Mandela

Dissidents can't be dissidents forever; we are dissidents because we don't want to be dissidents.

— Aung San Suu Kyi

I don’t think of myself as a dissident, and I’m more of an immigrant than an exile,

— Ha Jin

To use the terms that are reserved for official enemies, it is the commissars and apparatchiks, not the dissidents, who are respected…

— Noam Chomsky

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents… A lasting…

— Ludwig von Mises

Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of…

— Jonah Goldberg

The heaviest snowfall in over 60 years is being reported in Beijing, China. To give you an idea of how bad it…

— Jay Leno

Rebels and dissidents challenge the complacent belief in a just world, and they are usually denigrated for their efforts.

— Carol Tavris

The executions, persecution and imprisonment of political dissidents and the LGBT community, denial of free press, elections and religious freedoms, continue to…

— Andy Garcia

The whole dissident idea attracts a lot of crazies. And then all of a sudden, without realizing it, you've become one of…

— Peter Duesberg

The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it's how it treats its…

— Glenn Greenwald

During the Cold War, the United States took its friends where it found them. If they were willing to cast their lot…

— Pat Buchanan

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on…

— John F. Kennedy

The drafters of the [Refugee Convention ] had the Cold War in mind and mainly sought to protect a few thousand dissidents…

— Kofi Annan

Those of us and so many other stalwart critics and opponents and questioners and dissidents in conservative media were attacked for doing…

— Michelle Malkin

Well, as soon as [Donald Trump] travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an…

— Donald Trump

I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan…

— Azar Nafisi

In the last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension…

— Mahbub ul Haq

Dissidents are not imprisoned as in the domains of the Kremlin, in the old days. They do not have their brains blown…

— Noam Chomsky

There is much to be done, there is much that can be done... one person of integrity can make a difference, a…

— Elie Wiesel

The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire…

— Vaclav Havel

Go back to the Bible, the Old Testament. I mean there were people who we would call intelectuals, there, they were called…

— Noam Chomsky

My own feminist revolution evolved slowly, and traveled the world with me. To this day I have no idea what dissident professor…

— Mona Eltahawy

Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow…

— Steven Erikson

Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted…

— Pat Buchanan

I would very honestly just tell you that what I tried to do was simply respond to inquiries from people as they…

— Eliot Spitzer

“adolescent who expresses dissident opinion more or less vocally can end up in a place like that. Some of the children arrive…

— Masha Gessen

People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were…

— Vaclav Klaus

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

— Abbie Hoffman

“The oldest of North Korean labor camps, Bukchang had been hosting dissidents and alleged enemies of the state since the fifties .”

— David Baldacci

It is satisfying for the descendant of a dissident refugee from Elizabeth I to present his credentials to Elizabeth II.

— Kingman Brewster, Jr

The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

— Andrew Young

[Dissidents] groups would benefit enormously from learning about Ho Chi Minh's ideas on how to defeat a more popular enemy.

— William J. Duiker