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All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer
When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilised men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions. Walter Lippmann
I regret that by opposing Gowron I have brought disgrace to our family. I do not apologise for what I have done. I could not join Gowron and his war with Cardassia or the Federation; it would have been dishonourable. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e15: Sons of Mogh, Worf to Kern
The message was clear: opposition of any kind would not be tolerated. Third Reich: The Rise I, History 2010
There’s not one organisation that represents the New World Order. It’s a very very complex web. And it even goes into those organisations that you might think are actually countering their agenda – it’s called Controlled Opposition. Ian R Crane, lecture Liverpool 2008, ‘New World Order’
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. Edward R Murrow
To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That’s just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them. Michael Parenti
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... continue – and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
Mere sparks can ignite a popular movement that may seem dormant. Professor Noam Chomsky
In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America. Noam Chomsky
You offer an additional reason for your opposition: things would seem turned upside down. This would be a welcome change, for it would be the end of mankind if the worst situations were unalterable. John Milton
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
And I just think that it’ll take a little time for kids to start doing the duties that they’re supposed to do, which is challenge things, like corruption. Kurt Cobain, recorded interview 1992, often paraphrased as ‘The duty of youth is to challenge corruption’
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Desmond Tutu
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. Vladimir Lenin
Making noise is an effective means of opposition. Joseph Goebbels
For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Book of Mormon II Nephi 2:11
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. Albert Einstein, letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, 1940
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. Harry S Truman, 1950
The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. Orison Swett Marden
Opposition is true friendship. William Blake
4Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use. Francis Bacon
To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. Christopher Hitchens
But let’s be clear. We’re talking about a country where there’s no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and – sorry that’s Tony Blair isn’t it? Um, so he doesn’t even have to ask the country before he goes to war – sorry that’s still Tony Blair. Rory Bremner
It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important. Ian McEwan
I’ve spent a lot of time in America since September 11th 2001. Being here, I was noticing that the people, who in the ’60s used to voice their opinions about their rights, are much different today. People are afraid to voice opposition to the government in a mass way. Ziggy Marley
We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition. Patricia Hewitt
To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition. Woody Allen