Top 233 Riot Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?

I don't really think in terms of the future of literature. I think literature will be around "forever" - but in a relatively niche way, like jazz and poetry, although probably more widely consumed than jazz and poetry since it's fundamentally a narrative form. And I think that's important and places like Word Riot and 'The New York Tyrant' and 'n+1' will be responsible for keeping it alive.

And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe.

Brian De Palma was one of the rare directors who wanted us all to go to dailies. It was like a party. After shooting The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, we'd all walk over together, at like 5 or 6 o'clock, to the little theater. And we'd sit down and watch the dailies from like, the day before. And John Travolta, whenever I came onscreen, he was just laughing hysterically. He just thought I was a riot.

There is a masculinity in riot grrrl music, which is probably why I don't identify with it, but also why it was so important and powerful. That is something our scene has - regardless of who is in it, it has this very powerful feminine energy, like a Nefertiti head bust or Storm from X-Men. It's a woman you see as very powerful, sassy, arrogant, and dark.

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-makin g, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library.

Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed.

Betty White is a riot. She is a good time! That is the bottom line: Betty White is a good time. She is really an incredible woman. She is so kind. She doesn't have one mean bone in her body, and she is the funniest woman in the room always. And you'll never hear one complaint from her.

There was a time when I liked a good riot. Put on some heavy old street clothes that could stand a bit of sidewalk-scraping, infect myself with something good and contagious, then go out and stamp on some cops. It was great, being nine years old.

I'm sure I'll find some use for the dress before summer."Kavill nodded, and closed his thick ledger. "Do let me know if it causes anyone to faint-or start a riot."She laughed under her breath, and turned to go, stuffing her hands into her pockets and praying her fingers didn't fall off on the way home."Here," Kavill said, and she turned to find a pair of exquisite dove-gray suede gloves in his hands. "On the house. For many years of loyal patronage." His face bore its usual mask of polite calm and courtesy, but his brown eyes were bright. "And a gift-for a year spent without any gloves at all.

But I can think of nothing on earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night, which, for me, was ten to fifteen pounds of candy, a riot of colored wrappers and hopeful fonts,snub-nosed chocolate bars and SweeTARTS, the seductive rattle of Jujyfruits and Good & Plenty and lollipopsticks all akimbo, the foli ends of mini LifeSavers packs twinkling like dimes, and a thick sugary perfume rising up from the pillowcase.

If we paint the phases of a riot, the crowd bustling with uplifted fists and the noisy onslaughts of cavalry are translated upon the canvas in sheaves of lines corresponding with all the conflicting forces, following the general laws of violence of the picture... These force-lines must encircle and involve the spectator so that he will in a manner be forced to struggle himself with the persons in the picture.

Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place.

We were born ahead of our time. Don't forget that the riot-grrl scene had a lot to do with making The Slits a legend, and that didn't happen until the early '90s. We couldn't get together before then, because the legend hadn't been built yet. In the 2000s, we've become bigger than life in that way. It's become really important for The Slits to be here now, but idealistically, we should have done it in the '90s.

St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough. I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.

I'm not sure Riot Grrrl would have been as big a deal if the Internet had existed back then. Because there's so much stuff on the Internet. People could have been like, oh, whatever, I'm going to go look at pictures of Barbie vaginas, you know what I mean? There's so many different things on the Internet, you read one article and then you read something linked off that article and you go down the rabbit hole.

Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas? C'mon, that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you.

Whenever you see riot footage on TV - you know, someone throwing a brick in Pakistan or somebody throwing a fiery piece of pooh through a Starbucks window up in Seattle - you ever see anybody throwing anything underhand? I think it just takes all the aggression out of the act.

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding doth choke the feeder; Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

Life isn't always easy but so long as we have hope that we will find someone to help us through the darkness things will always get better. When we find that person, life suddenly explodes and darkness turns into a riot of colour. We're always looking for someone, what we need to remember is that someone is out there looking for us too.

I feel that non-violence is really the only way that we can follow because violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating many more problems for the negro community than it solved. We can through violence burn down a building, but you can't establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. And what we're trying to get rid of is hate, injustice, and all of these other things that continue the long night of man's inhumanity to man.

I took over a city that had two riots in four years and I had none. And they knew they couldn't riot on me. And when I saw the people on the street in New York City, I said to myself, you're breaking Giuliani's rules. You don't take my streets. You can have my sidewalks, but you don't take my streets, because ambulances have to get through there, fire trucks have to get through there.

Like a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have to labor with the current of opinion, when COMPELLED perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy pointed out, as plain as any problem in Euclid, in the first instance.

There was no moon but the night sky was a riot of crisp and glittering autumn stars. There were streetlights too and lights on buildings and on bridges which looked like earthbound stars and they glimmered repeated as they were reflected with the city in the night water of the Thames. It’s fairyland thought Richard.

And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Being the owner of Dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can't be trained and shouldn't be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a Dachshund to heed my slightest command. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something he wants to do.

There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth-yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams...... And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed... He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. I know myself," he cried, "but that is all.

The rest of Russia is watching the same television that Vladimir Putin is watching. As far as they're concerned, Pussy Riot was rightly convicted of blasphemy, and Putin has now finally showed some mercy and let them out early so they could spend New Year's with their kids. He was nice to them even though they are really nasty. That's the dominant view. This really is a war and the front line is really firm.

Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what's happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.

Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next.

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

Then he kissed her, not just a brush of lips as she'd done, but a kiss a kiss that scalded her tongue. The tree burst into full blooms. The garden fluttered around her. A riot of flowers shot out of the earth. She was mud-covered as he pulled back.

Nowadays I imagine people find freer and more accepting venues in blogs, on Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook, in the riot of shouting that trails in the wake of every news story. So there's always the pandemonium of the Internet, if you need to get your lunatic opinions out in public. I find most of that stuff a little insane-making and my preference is to encounter personal essays in the relatively sedate and stable universe of print, in literary quarterlies, magazines and books. But I'm sure you can find plenty of good stuff in lonely outposts all across the World Wide Web.

They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker The other is in his pants And the riot squad they're restless They need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight From Desolation Row.

I used to dream militant dreams of taking over america to show these whitefolks how it should be done i used to dream radical dreams of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers of correct analysis i even used to think that i'd be the one to stop the riot and negotiate the peace then i awoke & dug that if i dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does when she's natural i would have a revolution.

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism.

For years now I have run a kitchen-sink punk salon in my house, called Salon du Gay. In the early days, people would pay for a riot grrrl bob or a passable bleach job with a mixtape, $3 or a selection of baked goods - whichever they could afford. More recently though, with Gossip doing well, I've performed these punk hair transformations for free.

I was quite surprised when I started looking at the lyrics for 'Punk Prayer'. Given its brutal style, I did not expect the lyrics to be so well written and thought through. But the more I understood of it, the more I realised that this was not only a protest, it was brilliant art as well. So I decided I would try to strip away the layers that made me sceptical in the first place, and focus on the desperate beauty Pussy Riot have conceived in this song.

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn.

The scaffolders and builders from demolition companies nearby used to play each other for 20 quid a man - the tackles were mad. I played for the local estate against them one day and we won, there was a full-scale riot. 'He's a ringer' they were saying. Half of them were drunk so I could get the ball and just run and around them - I was only 12!

Bedding her could be anything from tenderness to riot, but to take her when she was a bit the worse for drink was always a particular delight. Intoxicated, she took less care for him than usual; abandoned and oblivious to all but her own pleasure, she would rake him, bite him - and beg him to serve her so, as well. He loved the feeling of power in it, the tantalizing choice between joining her at once in animal lust, or of holding himself-for a time- in check, so as to drive her at his whim.

The nineties as a pop cultural sphere was a really fertile time for feminism that was grounded and located in popular culture. I'm talking about before the Spice Girls - Sassy Magazine, riot grrrl, the Beastie Boys, Nirvana. You had this alternative culture that was very much speaking up on behalf of women and in favor of women.

There are some basic rules if they want to join the tumbling team. No drinking, no smoking, no swearing, no drugs and, most of all, no belonging to a gang. I read the riot act to them the minute they want to join. I tell them there's only one gang they can belong to if they want to be with me and that's Jesse White's gang.

Your brain sends out vibrations all the time, and your thoughts affect your life and other people's. They pick up these thoughts and get changed by them. That's why, say, a pacifist gets caught up in a riot situation. It's a field of vibrations - you can 'feel' someone else's thoughts when close to them.

When the riots happened in L.A., they didn't go to Beverly Hills to trash Rodeo Drive. They trashed their own neighborhoods. It's one of those tragedies that we always see in riot situations, where the only thing that they can lash out against is the stuff that's right there in their own communities. They destroy the very things that help them survive in their own community. There is a level of futility in that.

We'd all survive if Twitter shut down for a short while during major riots. Social media isn't any more important than a train station, a road or a bus service. We don't worry about police temporarily closing those. Common sense. If riot info and fear is spreading by Facebook and Twitter, shut them off for an hour or two, then restore.

High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.

I was born in '58, so the riot in Detroit in 1967 was a memorable introduction to the issue of race and how race made a difference in American society. And then the next year, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. And the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series. All of that made a huge impression on my growing mind.