Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights Leader
"Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil."
Agitation quotes
Agitation
61 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Osamu Dazai
Novelist
"I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric."
Ramana Maharshi
Spiritual Teacher
"Whatever is done lovingly, with righteous purity and with peace of mind, is a good action. Everything which is done with the stain of desire and with agitation filling the mind is classified as a bad action."
Lord Byron
Poet, Novelist
"It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time."
Amos Bronson Alcott
Philosopher, Educator
"Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only."
Explore further
Topics related to Agitation
Browse quotes that often appear alongside agitation — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Agitation quotes (page 1 of 4)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'."
Read quote
14 likes
"The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject."
Read quote
13 likes
"The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power."
Read quote
11 likes
"This is the mark of a perfect character - to pass through each day as though it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, and without pretense."
Read quote
10 likes
"The constancy of sages is nothing but the art of locking up their agitation in their hearts."
Read quote
10 likes
"Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation."
Read quote
7 likes
"The tranquility or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the big things which happen to us in life, as on the pleasant or unpleasant arrangements of the little things which happen daily."
Read quote
7 likes
"When you meet your 'soul mate' you'll feel calm. No anxiety, No agitation."
Read quote
7 likes
"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure."
Read quote
6 likes
"Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. . . . Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was an overpowering happiness."
Read quote
6 likes
"Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones."
Read quote
5 likes
"Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly."
Read quote
4 likes
"There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place."
Read quote
3 likes
"The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged."
Read quote
3 likes
"Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation."
Read quote
3 likes
"As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls."
Read quote
3 likes