Disobedience Quotes - Page 13

• The secret of all failure is disobedience.

  Mary Slessor

  Secret

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• To avoid the hard necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain instructions of our Lord in the New Testament we take refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. We evangelicals also know how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of fine and intricate explanations. These are tailor-made for the flesh. They excuse disobedience, comfort carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect. And the essence of it all is that Christ simply could not have meant what He said. His teachings are accepted even theoretically only after they have been weakened by interpretation.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Teaching, Mean, Essence

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• The only safe and honorable course for a self-respecting man is to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience ... not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Self, Law

  Mahatma Gandhi (1923). “Letters on Indian Affairs”

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• ... true civil disobedience ... compels the state to resort to power.

  Archibald Cox

  States, Resorts, Civil Disobedience

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• One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Life, Law, Degrees

  Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

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• 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

  Book, Doe, Holy

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• The purpose of problems is to push you toward obedience to God's laws, which are exact and cannot be changed. We have the free will to obey them or disobey them. Obedience will bring harmony, disobedience will bring you more problems.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Peace, Law, Mulling Over

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.59, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• I have always tried to be obedient regarding important matters like not being scalded to death by burning oil, but when public opinion takes a route far from one's inner conviction, one cannot value disobedience too highly.

  Barbara Dana

  Oil, Important, Public Opinion

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• There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Littles, Action

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

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• All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Thinking, Voting

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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• And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n, And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall From what high state of bliss into what woe!

  John Milton

  Fall, Woe, Bliss

  John Milton, James BUCHANAN (Grammarian.) (1773). “The First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost, Rendered Into Grammatical Construction ... With Notes ... To which are Prefixed Remarks on Ellipsis and Transposition ... By J. Buchanan”, p.352

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• He alone can remit sins who is appointed our Master by the Father of all; He only is able to discern obedience from disobedience.

  Clement of Alexandria

  Father, Able, Sin

  "'Noble Thoughts in Noble Language" edited by Henry Southgate, (p. 2), 1871.

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• All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

  Doris Lessing

  Party, Reality, People

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

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• 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

  Demand, Way, Authority

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• 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.

  Dorothy Day

  Voice, People, Evil

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• We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Men, Due Process Of Law, Remember

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• It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

  B. R. Ambedkar

  Mean, Way, Anarchy

  B. R. Ambedkar (1997). “Selected speeches of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: (1927 - 1956)”

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• It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be. Indeed, they will be mentally healthier if they do not suppress rage, but vent it constructively and use its energy peacefully but forcefully to cripple the operations of an oppressive society. Civil disobedience can utilize the militance wasted in riots to seize clothes or groceries many do not even want.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Clothes, Energy, Use

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• If obedience invariably leads to cruelty, disobedience is our moral duty.

  Martin Firrell

  Moral, Obedience, Cruelty

  "Keep the Faith". Text projections in the Duveen Gallery, Tate Britain, London, 2006.

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• There are some few instances in which it is virtuous to disobey.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Virtuous, Instance

  Ann Radcliffe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated)”, p.1205, Delphi Classics

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• You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there, obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there, kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth.

  Richard Grossman

  Law, Class, Community

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• When we look at the matter from another point of view, great caution would seem to be required. For the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil, and, when the advantage is small, some errors both of lawgivers and rulers had better be left; the citizen will not gain so much by making the change as he will lose by the habit of disobedience.

  Aristotle

  Errors, Views, Law

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.63, Aristotle

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• It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Thinking, Government

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.898, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Disobedience is man's original virtue.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Virtue, Originals

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• If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Giving Up, War, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.293, Simon and Schuster

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