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."
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Martin Luther King Quotes
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.
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Martin Luther King Quotes
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.
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John J. Miller Quotes
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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.
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Mark Twain Quotes
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.
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Bishop Desmond Tutu Quotes
Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence.
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Juvenal Quotes
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.
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George Bernard Shaw Quotes
You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
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Malcolm X Quotes
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
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Albert Einstein Quotes
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
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Louis D. Brandeis Quotes
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.
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Alexander Bickel Quotes
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
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Edmund Burke Quotes
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.
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Erich Fromm Quotes
It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.
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Lemuel K. Washburn Quotes
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.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes