Civil Disobedience Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Civil Disobedience". There are currently 3 quotes in our collection about Civil Disobedience. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Civil Disobedience!
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  • Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

  • Those whose conscience demands that they defy authority in some ways that involve great consequences must be willing to accept some penalty.

    Demand   Way   Authority  
  • Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head.

    Mahatma Gandhi (1951). “Satyagraha: Non-violent Resistance”
  • 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.

    Eye   Ill Will   Hands  
    Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • You can't be neutral on a moving train.

    Howard Zinn (1999). “Marx in Soho: A Play on History”, p.57, South End Press
  • Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them?

    Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.96, Bantam Classics
  • Ours is a civil fight, and imprisonment as a civil prisoner has got to be earned by the strict observance of the programme.

    Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”
  • King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

  • A defiant deed has greater value than unnumerable thousands of words.

  • Accepting yourself as you are is an act of civil disobedience.

  • Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.

    Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.6, Hayes Barton Press
  • 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.

    Civil Disobedience (1849) See Savio 1
  • Civil disobedience is an act of love.

    "Civil disobedience is an act of love | An interview with Tim DeChristopher". Interview with Leslee Goodman, moonmagazine.org. December 1, 2014.
  • I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.

    Terry Tempest Williams (2006). “A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams”, Utah State Univ Pr
  • Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity.

    Mahatma Gandhi, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (1993). “The Penguin Gandhi Reader”, p.148, Penguin Books India
  • 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.

    War   Law   Judging  
  • In the States we've had by far the largest demonstrations in the last few years. The largest civil disobedience actions about anything in US history in the last 30 years have all been centred around the climate.

    Years   Lasts   Climate  
    Source: www.opendemocracy.net
  • No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime.

  • It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

  • I favor massive civil disobedience, among other things. It is not the only thing that is used to protest any grievance in society. But it is one of the most effective under certain conditions.

    Favors   Certain   Used  
    Source: openvault.wgbh.org
  • I'm absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn't be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven.

  • It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

  • There's a reason survivors choose not to go to the police, and that's because they're treated as the criminals. The rapists are innocent until proven guilty, but survivors are guilty until proven innocent - at least in the eyes of the police.

    Eye   Class   Justice  
  • I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

    Peace   Block   Order  
    Letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 Apr. 1963, in Atlantic Monthly Aug. 1963, p. 81
  • Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience.

    Art   People   Obedience  
    Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1986). “The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi: Non-Violent Resistance and Social Transformation”, Clarendon Press
  • I think the big turning moment was when I joined the student political action club and started studying nonviolent civil disobedience in response to the Iraq War. The first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta was the first protest that I'd ever been to, and I helped organize the school walkout when I was a junior. It was a really solidifying moment.

    War   School   Thinking  
    Source: www.guernicamag.com
  • 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.

  • I know of only one country, at least to my knowledge, which has a dissident culture where leading figures, I mean, the most famous writers, journalists, academics and so on, are not only critical of state policy, but are constantly carrying out civil disobedience and risking imprisonment and often being imprisoned, standing up for people's rights. That's Turkey.

    Country   Mean   Rights  
    Source: theanarchistlibrary.org
  • A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

    Wise   Men   Wish  
    Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.6, Hayes Barton Press
  • Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.

    Voice   People   Evil  
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