Quotes on civil disobedience
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."
King, Martin Luther
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.
King, Martin Luther
Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
Miller, John J.
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
Twain, Mark
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Tutu, Bishop Desmond
Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence.
Juvenal
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.
Shaw, George Bernard
You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
Malcolm X
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
Brandeis, Louis D.
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.
Bickel, Alexander
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Burke, Edmund
Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.
Fromm, Erich
It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.
Washburn, Lemuel K.
If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Thoreau, Henry David