If 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. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider […]
Civil Disobedience Quotes
One can say categorically that there is no constitutional right of civil disobedience to a valid law.
Social protest and even civil disobedience serve the law’s need for growth.
The core of the evil in true civil disobedience is that it weakens the bonds of law and compels the state to resort to power.
Disobedience is the worst of evils. This it is that ruins a nation.
The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take course unresistingly. The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry […]
Those whose conscience demands that they defy authority in some ways that involve great consequences must be willing to accept some penalty.
