Civil Disobedience Quotes

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.

The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience.

There is no "playing with truth" in the Charkha programme, for satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth.

Okay, so here's my question: When did civility become incompatible with protest? Why do some people consider civility an antonym - anathema, even - to political action and dissent? Because, and I'm raising my voice, it's not. Have we forgotten how Mahatma Gandhi used nonviolent civil disobedience to free India from British rule and inspire civil rights movements worldwide?

Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience.

Satyagraha and civil disobedience and fasts have nothing in common with the use of force, veiled or open.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

Active nonviolence is necessary for those who will offer civil disobedience but the will and proper training are enough for the people to co-operate with those who are chosen for civil disobedience.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.

Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing.

Civil disobedience and excitement and intoxication go ill together.

The world - and America - has been defined by people who haven't necessarily abided by the laws and the rules. Civil disobedience is part of our nation's history and has redirected our country in many instances, from the feminist movement to the Civil Rights movement and beyond.

From an athlete's perspective, to cancel the Olympics in regards to the threats would be absolutely devastating - especially since the Olympics - it's really about people meeting together through sports and putting aside their countries' differences for that time.

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

The privilege of resisting or disobeying a particular law or order accrues only to him who gives willing and unswerving obedience to the laws laid down for him.

Individual civil disobedience was everybody's inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life.

In response to criticism of its treatment of killer whales, Sea World said it will build them a larger habitat. When asked for comment, killer whales said, 'Hey, you know what's a larger habitat?' THE OCEAN.

A dog can bite you but you must not bite the dog! Your every movement in life must be peaceful; otherwise you lose your ethical superiority! Nonviolent civil disobedience is a genius; no power can beat it; use it when necessary!

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.

No one will give you change. You have to work for it. You have to earn it not by screaming, but by working hard, by believing in yourself, by proving yourself. There are windows, but if you are radical, no one will talk to you. And that window will shut.

I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

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.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

You know, my father was a great encouragement for me because he spoke out for women's rights, he spoke out for girl's education. And at that time I said that why should I wait for someone else, why should I be looking to the government, to the army that they would help us? Why don't I raise my voice, why don't we speak up for our rights?

The world censures those who take up arms to defend their causes and calls on them to use nonviolent means in voicing their grievances. But when a people chooses the nonviolent path, it is all too often the case that hardly anyone pays attention. It is tragic that people have to suffer and die and the television cameras have to deliver the pictures to people's homes every day before the world at large admits there is a problem.

In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Why was there not massive civil disobedience against this anti-Christian discrimination, as there was against segregation?

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. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

Throughout American history, the political leaders have always exhorted the American people to be nice and quiet and leave things to them. But when very serious evils confronted the American people, they had to go beyond the Congressmen and Senators, and they had to commit civil disobedience and they had even to break the law.

No one understands that the First Amendment is only important if you are going to offend somebody. If you're not going to offend somebody, you don't need protection of the First Amendment.

No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

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.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

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

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.

The state says: "Well, in order for it to be legitimate civil disobedience, you have to follow these rules." They put us in "free-speech zones"; they say you can only do it at this time, and in this way, and you can't interrupt the functioning of the government. They limit the impact that civil disobedience can achieve. We have to remember that civil disobedience must be disobedience if it's to be effective.

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

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

I think that what I was talking about was that as a woman growing up in a Mormon tradition in Salt Lake City, Utah, we were taught - and we are still led to believe - that the most important value is obedience. But that obedience in the name of religion or patriotism ultimately takes our souls. So I think it's this larger issue of what is acceptable and what is not; where do we maintain obedience and law and where do we engage in civil disobedience - where we can cross the line physically and metaphorically and say, "No, this is no longer appropriate behavior."

To engage in civil disobedience is to feel the abundance of courage, the gratitude for a democracy that still invites us to speak from our hearts, to act from our conscience and have faith in the consequences of moral action. Abundance is a form of consciousness.

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.