Acceptance of dissent is the fundamental requirement of a free society. - Richard Royster
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. - Edward R. Murrow
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.' - G.K.Chesterton
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. - George Bernard Shaw
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. - H.L.Menken
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. - John F. Kennedy
The liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents. - Wendell Phillips
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. - J. William Fulbright
Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men. - Herbert Hoover
Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice. - John Adams
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution. - Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. - Samuel Johnson
The driving force in the world today is the human heart - that is, human emotions. (Yeats, Blake - every poet, come to think of it - has always told us that.) Our tools have become very powerful. Hate, not bombs, destroys cities. Desire, not bricks, rebuilds them. Do we as a species have the emotional maturity and the wisdom to use our powerful tools well? - Margaret Atwood
Free Speech is the right to yell 'Theater!' in a crowded fire. - Abbie Hoffman