Top 100 Resistance Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.”

— Bob Marley

Also featured in: Music Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Being Strong Quotes

2. “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

— Steven Pressfield

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Quotes About Writing

3. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

— Nelson Mandela

Also featured in: Success Quotes, Life Quotes, Persistence Quotes, Quotes About Strength

4. “We shall never surrender.”

— Winston Churchill

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Perseverance Quotes, Quotes About Strength

5. “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Quotes About Strength, Empowering Quotes, Mindset Quotes

6. “Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

— Karl Marx

Also featured in: Famous Quotes, Hard Hitting Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Struggle Quotes

7. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Empowerment Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Fighting Quotes

8. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Also featured in: Taking Action Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Responsibility Quotes

9. “You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Fighting Quotes, Freedom Quotes

10. “Your silence will not protect you.”

— Audre Lorde

Also featured in: Commitment Quotes, Strong Women Quotes, Healing Quotes, Silence Quotes

11. “Where there is power, there is resistance.”

— Michel Foucault

12. “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

— Howard Zinn

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Moving Quotes, Justice Quotes, History Quotes

13. “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

— Alan Moore

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Epic Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Democracy Quotes

14. “Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many-they are few.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Also featured in: Quotes About Strength, Changing the World Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Victory Quotes

15. “You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I’ll rise.”

— Maya Angelou

Also featured in: Quotes About Strength, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Poetry Quotes, Obstacles Quotes

16. “They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Freedom Quotes

17. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, Rights Quotes, 4th Of July Quotes

18. “Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.”

— Steven Pressfield

Also featured in: Willpower Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Procrastination Quotes, Momentum Quotes

19. “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Humanism Quotes, Freedom Quotes

20. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

— Steven Pressfield

Also featured in: Procrastination Quotes

21. “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”

— Nelson Mandela

Also featured in: Struggle Quotes, Freedom Quotes

22. “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

— Angela Y. Davis

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes

23. “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.”

— Steven Pressfield

Also featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Obstacles Quotes

24. “Insurrection is the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

— Marquis de Lafayette

Also featured in: Rights Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

25. “They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.”

— Bhagat Singh

Also featured in: Willpower Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Grit Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

26. “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

27. “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Justice Quotes, Corruption Quotes

28. “Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.”

— Steven Pressfield

29. “I’m going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I’m not going to be what you want me to be.”

— Steve Biko

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Rejection Quotes

30. “What you resist, persists.”

— C.G. Jung

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Reflection Quotes, Thought Provoking Quotes

31. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Also featured in: Wisdom Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Government Quotes

32. “Resist much, obey little.”

— Walt Whitman

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, Individuality Quotes

33. “Beat me, hate me, you can never break me.”

— Michael Jackson

Also featured in: Music Quotes, Resilience Quotes, Self-Belief Quotes

34. “Nothing negatively impacts organisation performance quicker than an employee who resists change and who believes that the way they work today is the way they will work tomorrow.”

— Peter F Gallagher

Also featured in: Transformation Quotes, Performance Quotes, Adaptability Quotes, Quotes About Work

35. “Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.”

— Václav Havel

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Truth Quotes

36. “So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Quotes About Trying, Struggle Quotes, Ambition Quotes

37. “Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Struggle Quotes, Peace Quotes

38. “I have not yet begun to fight!”

— John Paul Jones

Also featured in: Giving Up Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Hero Quotes, Quotes About War

39. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

— Audre Lorde

Also featured in: Self-Care Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Compassion Quotes, Caring Quotes

40. “He who fights, can lose. He who doesn’t fight, has already lost.”

— Bertolt Brecht

Also featured in: Fighting Quotes

41. “To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.”

— James Baldwin

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Rights Quotes

42. “I’ll stand my ground and I won’t back down...”

— Tom Petty

Also featured in: Quotes About Strength, Willpower Quotes, Dedication Quotes, Artist Quotes

43. “This machine kills fascists.”

— Woody Guthrie

44. “Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

— Elie Wiesel

Also featured in: Impact Quotes, Morality Quotes, Helping Quotes, Justice Quotes

45. “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Justice Quotes

46. “If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Justice Quotes

47. “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Conscience Quotes, Justice Quotes

48. “It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime, what better place than here? What better time than now?”

— Zack de la Rocha

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes, Moving Quotes, Momentum Quotes

49. “Start before you’re ready. Good things happen when we start before we’re ready.”

— Steven Pressfield

Also featured in: New Beginnings Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Momentum Quotes, Hesitation Quotes

50. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

— Karl Marx

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Communication Quotes