Riots Quotes

“If you’re listening to this, congratulations! You survived Doomsday.
I’d like to apologize straightaway for any inconvenience the end of the world may have caused you. The earthquakes, rebellions, riots,tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, and of course the giant snake who swallowed the sun—I’m afraid most of that was our fault. Carter and I decided we should at least explain how it happened.”
― Rick Riordan, The Serpent's Shadow

“But 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. 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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Our problems started in Dallas, when the fire-breathing sheep destroyed the King Tut exhibit.”
― Rick Riordan, The Serpent's Shadow

“Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt.
Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt’s collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I’d
met them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on top
of it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted.
“Hindenburg,” I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. “Walt, why in the world—?”
“Sorry!” he yelled. “Wrong amulet!”
The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn’t much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawed
at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas.
I moved to Walt’s side and tried to get my bearings.”
― Rick Riordan, The Serpent's Shadow

“Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?”
― Emil Cioran

“You can't fight hatred with hatred and expect anyone to listen to you. You can only try to lessen it with humor, wit, truth and commonsense. If that doesn't work run like hell, while they throw rocks at you.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“You would have realized that it wasn't Mumtaz, a muslim, a friend of yours, but a human being you had killed. I mean, if he was a bastard, by killing him you wouldn't have killed the bastard in him; similarly, assuming that he was a Muslim, you wouldn't have killed his Muslimness, but him.”
― Saadat Hasan Manto, Toba Tek Singh: Stories

“On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot

“I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him, tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd want to stop one.”
― Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Some people are not even that precious to be counted in the official death tolls.”
― Neeraj Agnihotri, In The Name Of Blasphemy

“I once had been in the middle of a mass chaos and terrible riots.
There, I witnessed how men were truly such as beasts unleashed.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another? Are the tensions, the recognitions, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign?”
― Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“Living with the daily ugliness of slum life, educational castration and economic exploitation, some ghetto dwellers now and then strike out in spasms of violence and self-defeating riots. A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. It is the desperate, suicidal cry of one who is so fed up with the powerlessness of his cave existence that he asserts that he would rather be dead than ignored.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Their military experience made them more of a threat. Their pride was seen as something in need of control. Once again irrational white supremacist fears turned into extreme forms of brutality. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, no one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than Black Veterans who had proven their valor and courage as soldiers. Thousands of Black Veterans were assaulted, threatened, abused or lynched following military service. Violence targeted at Black Veterans and their families led to one of the bloodiest summers for Black Americans, known in history as the Red Summer. Approximately 25 race riots broke out across the United States. In different cities, white rioters attacked Black men, women, and children, targeted Black organizational meetings and destroyed Black homes and Black businesses. Hundreds of Black people were killed and thousands were injured in the onslaughts.
service”
― Anna Malaika Tubbs, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

“It is understandable that the white community should fear the outbreak of riots. They are indefensible as weapons of struggle, and Negroes must sympathize with whites who feel menaced by them. Indeed, Negroes are themselves no less menaced, and those living in the ghetto always suffer most directly from the destructive turbulence of a riot.

Yet the average white person also has a responsibility. He has to resist the impulse to seize upon the rioter as the exclusive villain. He has to rise up with indignation against his own municipal, state and national governments to demand that the necessary reforms be instituted which alone will protect him. If he reserves his resentment only for the Negro, he will be the victim by allowing those who have the greatest culpability to evade responsibility.

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. There is no other answer. Constructive social change will bring certain tranquility; evasions will merely encourage turmoil.

Negroes hold only one key to the double lock of peaceful change. The other is in the hands of the white community.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“I know a lot of Americans who would be glad to settle for better bus service from their home to their jobs, or from poor neighborhoods to areas of the city where jobs are to be found. Repeated studies of riots in urban ghettos show that lack of adequate transportation was a big factor in the discontent and bitterness which caused riot conditions to erupt, but President Nixon's answer is to build a space shuttle or an SST with precious public funds, to serve a tiny elite of the population or to stimulate the economy of a state or region by creating massive and useless technological publicworks projects.

(From Voices of Multicultural America)”
― Shirley Chisholm

“Mob is not the plural of man, he said. We’re dealing with a different species, that has kaleidoscopes in the hollows of the eyes. Where projections of violence keep rotating at increasing velocity. Until the prisms shatter with their own frenzy, & the blinded creature collapses in the rubble it has created.”
― Ursule Molinaro, The Autobiography of Cassandra, Princess & Prophetess of Troy

“You don't need to worry about picking a side when it comes to politics. Just be good to those around you, and be the neighbour you'd like to have living next door. The rest takes care of itself when we look after eachother regardless of differences.”
― Torron-Lee Dewar

“A police officer is paid to be attacked by angry people.”
― Steven Magee

“A police officer is a job where you are dressed in riot gear and sent into areas where dangerous projectiles may be thrown at you!”
― Steven Magee

“Cumulative Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is one of the many occupational hazards for police officers.”
― Steven Magee

“A police officer is one of the most dangerous jobs a person can do.”
― Steven Magee

“To riot or not to riot, that is the question.”
― Steven Magee

“When people riot, there are generally much deeper reasons for the rioting than what is being reported by the corporate media.”
― Steven Magee

“To riot for equality or to riot for historic national identity, that is the question.”
― Steven Magee

“To riot for immigration or to riot for strict border control, that is the question.”
― Steven Magee

“To riot for better protection of children or to riot for all of the other toxic government issues, that is the question.”
― Steven Magee

“I followed along with Sky News and BBC News during the UK 2024 riots. The BBC News feed distinctly changed after it emerged the killer of the young girls was a BBC TV star. The Sky news feed distinctly changed after the rioting did not stop. After a week of watching both of them, I never trusted either news feed and started to get my news from social media. Both channels reported the Banksy police box artwork as ‘fish’ when they were flesh eating piranhas!”
― Steven Magee

“We live in a world of illusion where morally bankrupt leaders, cloaked in power, marvel at why principled citizens reject their hollow ideologies. In this topsy-turvy world, criminals and warmongers are exalted as saints, their names etched in gilded annals, while advocates of peace and justice are vilified, cast as pariahs. To dare to be different, to stand for truth in a sea of deceit, is to be branded an enemy, a heretic against the warped dogmas of a fractured age.

(The government by the whores for power— the creed of the communo—bourgeoisie)”
― Njau Kihia

“The current American scene can be lamented for its violence, crime, and chaos. To me there is less violence today than there was in the period that saw lynchings, murder of labor organizers, mobster rule of the cities in the Prohibition period, the Memorial Day Massacre by Chicago's police in the late 1930's, and the sinister everyday violence of whites against blacks. We dare to talk about the violence of the ghetto riots, which mainly consist of an assault against property, when for these hundreds of years we have daily, hourly, visited upon the blacks a violence against human spirit, a degradation and denial reminiscent of Chinese torture. What makes it even worse is our inordinate hypocrisy in posing as protagonists of freedom, equality, and fraternity while denouncing totalitarian racist butchers. Phony self-righteousness makes us grotesque.

What many see as chaos and disorder today are to me the boiling over of the human spirit in a demand for direction and purpose to give meaning to life and carry us toward the goals of freedom, equality, economic security, opportunity, justice, and peace.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals