Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt. — Mahatma Gandhi
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
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. — Henry David Thoreau
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. — Oscar Wilde
...the Government must not think that they can stop this agitation. It will go on...We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in out efforts to become law-makers. — Emmeline Pankhurst
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? — Henry David Thoreau
When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties. — Marquis de Lafayette
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. — Thomas Jefferson
Short Civil Disobedience Quotes
There is no justice in following unjust laws. — Aaron Swartz
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. — Howard Zinn
To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy. — Thurgood Marshall
It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest. — Abraham Lincoln
Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. — Thomas Jefferson
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. — Howard Zinn
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion is a right. — Simon Bolivar
Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty. — Norman Douglas
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. — Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience Image Quotes
Thousands of tired, never-shaken, over civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home, that wilderness is a necessity.
Disobedience Quotes
God is responsible for the consequences of our obedience, WE are responsible for the consequences of our disobedience — Charles Stanley
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
A defiant deed has greater value than unnumerable thousands of words. — Emmeline Pankhurst
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart; but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself. — Justin Martyr
Today's difficulties are often a result of yesterday's disobedience. — Priscilla Shirer
Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. — Benedict of Nursia
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought. — Margaret Chase Smith
I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being. — Joan Baez
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world. — Betty Friedan
Organized civil disobedience is the correct next response to the prolonged, indefinite and deliberate abuse of exotic emergency powers inconsistent with being a free people in our own country. I don’t want to go there, but it is time. — Eric Weinstein
No one understands that the First Amendment is only important if you are going to offend somebody. If you're not going to offend somebody, you don't need protection of the First Amendment. — Larry Flynt
Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. — Arundhati Roy
I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up. — Larry Klayman
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. — Aaron Swartz
Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason. — Erich Fromm
A downtrodden class... will never be able to make an effective protest until it achieves solidarity. — H. G. Wells
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man. — Henry David Thoreau
Government is best which governs least — Thomas Paine
Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works. — Cleve Jones
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. — Howard Zinn
. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward. — Henry David Thoreau
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will. — Hannah Arendt
If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God. — Francis Schaeffer
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. — Aristotle
I believe that Gandhi was correct. Non-violent civil disobedience is the only way to bring about change that allows people to enjoy the change and not get killed in the process. — Edward James Olmos
An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment. — Mahatma Gandhi
You can't be neutral on a moving train. — Howard Zinn
Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. — Henry David Thoreau
No one will give you change. You have to work for it. You have to earn it not by screaming, but by working hard, by believing in yourself, by proving yourself. There are windows, but if you are radical, no one will talk to you. And that window will shut. — Haifaa al-Mansour
Those whose conscience demands that they defy authority in some ways that involve great consequences must be willing to accept some penalty. — Joseph Wood Krutch
Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization. — Erich Fromm
We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them. — Alexander Bickel
It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter
The privilege of resisting or disobeying a particular law or order accrues only to him who gives willing and unswerving obedience to the laws laid down for him. — Mahatma Gandhi
Civil disobedience is not accepted by religion and the state does not accept it and there are many verses in the Holy Book that talk of following the ruler. — Pope Shenouda III
Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience. — Mahatma Gandhi
Civil disobedience is not accepted by religion and the state does not accept it and there are many verses in the Holy Book that talk of following the ruler. — Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
... true civil disobedience ... compels the state to resort to power. — Archibald Cox
Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. — George Bernard Shaw
I don’t believe in eye-for-an-eye. The most incredible, sustainable, beautiful movements have been non-violent movements of civil disobedience. — Ellen Page
Lobbying, protesting, letter-writing, American media, civil disobedience, and preaching pacifism ad nauseum, along with EDUCATION is the most effective way to enlighten the masses. Welfare concessions/campaigns, are counterproductive and simply ineffective in this day and age. — Gary Yourofsky
No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime. — Hermann Graf Keyserling
In Conclusion
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