#dissident

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

— Natan Sharansky

#dissidents #killed #then #ussr #were

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. (“Letter To Stalin”) ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#dissident #expatriate #lierature #writing #art

Our focus needs to be on freeing dissidents and continuing to support the opposition movement within Cuba - not rewarding Castro and subsidizing and strengthening his totalitarian regime. ↗

— Mel Martinez

#continuing #cuba #dissidents #focus #freeing

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

— Aung San Suu Kyi

#dissidents #forever #want

People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were pursuing a common goal in different ways. ↗

— Vaclav Klaus

#being #bosses #common #common goal #different

Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968 had already happened, but the hardline regime took several months to crack down on dissidents. ↗

— Vaclav Klaus

#august #cornell #crack #dissidents #down

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

— Aung San Suu Kyi

#believe #dissidents #i #i think #just

What good does it do you to love? ↗

— Trisha Leigh

#deshi #dissidents #love #love-hurts #lucas

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

— Abbie Hoffman

#conformists #democracy #dissidents #freedom #gives