Do One Thing - Quotes for a Better World

Silence QUOTES

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Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.
-- Muhammad Ali

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

* Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.
-- Roger Nash Baldwin

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious.
Majorities, of course, are often mistaken.
This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous.
Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
-- Alan Barth

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech as shallow as time.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Silence is more eloquent than words.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
-- Confucius

* As we must account for every idle word,
so must we account for every idle silence.
-- Benjamin Franklin

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
--Dave Tyson Gentry

Independent media can go to where the silence is and break the sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse to do.
-- Amy Goodman

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
~ Aldous Huxley

Silence is refreshment for the soul.
-- Wynonna Judd

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
-- Helen Keller

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

Silence is a source of great strength.
-- Lao Tzu

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
-- Abraham Lincoln

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
-- Abraham Lincoln

What I am looking for... is an immobile movement, something which would be the equivalent of what is called the eloquence of silence, or what St. John of the Cross, I think it was, described with the term 'mute music'.
-- Joan Miro

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
-- Henri Nouwen

* Race is the great taboo in our society. We are afraid to talk about it. White folks fear their unspoken views will be deemed racist. People of color are filled with sorrow and rage at unrighted wrongs. Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other. Once we decide to transform ourselves from fearful caterpillars into courageous butterflies, we will be able to bridge the racial gulf and move forward together towards a bright and colorful future.
-- Eva Paterson

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit
what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
-- William Penn

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
-- Rachel Naomi Remen

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.
-- Paul Robeson

"Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty."
-- Oscar Romero

* Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the opressor.
-- Ginetta Sagan

When we have the courage to speak out – to break our silence –
we inspire the rest of the "moderates" in our communities to speak up and voice their views.
-- Sharon Schuster

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."
-- Haile Selassie

Listen to the sound of silence.
-- Paul Simon

Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.
-- Susan Sontag

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.
~Wallace Stegner

See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
-- Mother Teresa

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
-- Henry David Thoreau

* “In the last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed.”
-- Mahbub ul-Haq

* “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentors, not the tormented Wherever anyone is persecuted for their race or political views, that place must become the center of the universe.”
-- Elie Wiesel

* "Chinese and Tibetan dissidents are either locked up in prison, forced into hiding, or silenced by fear of police retaliation against their families. All the happiness about China's economic growth has made many Americans forget that police clubs and guns and the Laogai system keep the Communist Party in power. Moreover, it is still little recognized how American resources help to sustain that power through trade, investments, and the transfer of technology... It is only when the Laogai is abolished in China that real change will come about."
-- Harry Wu

"Art amplifies voices on the margins—the views and opinions that power silences."
-- Will Youmans

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