Disobedience Quotes - Page 3

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  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.

  Desmond Tutu

  Bullying, Peace, Elephants

  FaceBook post by Desmond Tutu from Jan 22, 2014

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• I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Justice, Retreat, Excuse

  The Liberator, 1 Jan. 1831 (first issue)

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• f the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Government, Law, Let It Go

  "Civil Disobedience". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1849.

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• Government is best which governs least

  Thomas Paine

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

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• Let me explain something you already know. I'm from Texas and we understand the nature of a border. From what I've seen, vigilant Texans are being ordered to stand down and allow criminals to pass. Mr. President, prepare to see Texans ignoring those orders.

  Tommy Lee Jones

  Texas, Order, Understanding

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• Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Thank You, Time, Children

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• DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Sarcastic, Clouds, Silver

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.58, University of Georgia Press

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• Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, Pain, Block

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.93, Beacon Press

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• The problem in this world is not civil disobedience...th e problem in this world is civil obedience.

  Howard Zinn

  World, Problem, Obedience

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• Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Men, History

  Civil Disobedience (1849)

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• We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Struggle, Police Violence, Discipline

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Mother, Men, Fire

  The Liberator, 1 Jan. 1831 (first issue)

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• Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Men, Voting

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

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• To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Leadership, Freedom, Business

  "Poems of Problems" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Protest", (pp. 154 - 155), 1914.

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• My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy.

  Vandana Shiva

  Believe, People, Political

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• If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Done, Realizing, Construction

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• Just try to make the world a better place for your having been here.

  Jimmy Doolittle

  Extraordinary Person, Trying, World

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• How can it be other than right to worship the Body of the Lord, all-holy and all-reverend as it is, announced as it was by the archangel Gabriel, formed by the Holy Spirit, and made the Vesture of the Word? It was at any rate a bodily hand that the Word stretched out to raise her that was sick of a fever (Mk. 1:31): a human voice that He uttered to raise Lazarus - the dead (Jn. 11:43); and, once again, stretching out His hands upon the Cross, He overthrew the prince of the power of the air, that now works (Eph. 2:2) in the sons of disobedience, and made the way clear for us into the heavens.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Son, Hands

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• Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Machines, Life Is, Friction

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Savio 1

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• You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that's available to us as Christians.

  Joyce Meyer

  Christian, Causes, Rebellion

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• Rejoicing is clearly a spiritual command. To ignore it, I need to remind you, is disobedience.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Spiritual, Needs, Rejoice

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• The key of joy is disobedience.

  Aleister Crowley

  Keys, Joy

  Aleister Crowley, “Hymn To Lucifer”

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• Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Suffering, Preparation, Mute

  Mahatma Gandhi, Judith M. Brown (2008). “The Essential Writings”, p.363, Oxford University Press

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• Non-cooperation is an attempt to awaken the masses, to a sense of their dignity and power. This can only be done by enabling them to realise that they need not fear brute force, if they but know the soul within.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Soul, Done

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• So often we give God a partial obedience. We do not dare to disobey, but we do not care to obey fully. So we compromise. We do some of what we should, thus removing the stigma of disobedience. But we refrain from the most difficult or objectionable or uncomfortable part, and thus try to get the best of both worlds.

  Ebenezer Erskine

  Giving, Trying, World

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