Agitator Quotes
He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Nazi agitator whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants' meeting: ‘We don't want lower bread prices, we don't want higher bread prices, we don't want unchanged bread prices-we want National-Socialist bread prices,' came nearer explaining fascism than anybody I have heard since.
Peter Drucker
That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, "These agitators are stirring up a feeling of dissatisfaction among working men and they should be suppressed,” will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment. The man that reads such paragraphs as this will not lay the blame of it at the door of the agitator:
"Mrs. Sarah Jane Geary, an Englishwoman, residing in this city, committed suicide a few days since. Her husband is a miner, and, owing to the frequent suspensions of business in the mines during the past winter, his meager earnings were insufficient to support the family. The fact preyed on Mrs. Geary's mind, and she resolved to end her life, that her children might receive her share of the food, otherwise they would go hungry.”.
Terence V. Powderly
In later life I was charged by many with being an agitator; some of my friends in defending me against assault denied that I was an agitator; they were wrong, I was an agitator and as such did all that lay in my power with voice and pen to agitate against the injustices practices on workingmen and women.
Terence V. Powderly
It might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man's character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care."
William Kingdon Clifford
The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who profits by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those "business interests” that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity.
Theodore Roosevelt
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feeling, till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy, that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptable government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy.
Abraham Lincoln
The present industrial era brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers. I conjecture that this class attained its acme of popularity and power, at least in America, toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Almost at the opening of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition found for its mouthpiece the President of the Union himself. If Mr. Roosevelt became, what his adversaries are pleased to call, an agitator, his agitation had a cause which is as deserving of study as is the path of a cyclone.
Brooks Adams
Reward for information leading to the apprehension of -
Jesus Christ
Wanted - For Sedition, Criminal Anarchy - Vagrancy, and Conspiring to Overthrow the Established Government.
Dresses poorly, said to be a carpenter by trade, ill-nourished, has visionary ideas, associates with common working people, the unemployed and bums. Alien - believed to be a Jew. Alias: "Prince of Peace. Son of Man." "Light of the world" &c. &c. Professional Agitator, Red beard, marks on hands and feet the result of injuries inflicted by an angry mob led by respectable citizens and legal authorities.
Jesus Christ
It might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man's character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care."
In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man's belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts.
William Kingdon Clifford
Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who profits by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those "business interests” that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity.
Theodore Roosevelt
The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.
Emma Goldman
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
Martin Luther King Jr.