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Civil Disobedience Quotes
...it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an
irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds...
-- Samuel Adams
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.
-- Hannah Arendt
* That's all nonviolence is - organized love.
-- Joan Baez
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.
-- Joan Baez
* 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.
-- Bishop Carlos Belo
We spoke out, committed civil disobedience, and went to jail
because the peace hangs senselessly and precariously upon weapons
costing billions to build and billions to improve weapons
which become more useless as we add to their destructive force.
With this money we could have fed the world's people. Half the
children on earth go to bed hungry millions more have
retarding and stunting protein deficiencies. Instead of building
the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease,
illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion
dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become
the international preoccupation."
-- Daniel Berrigan
* If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we
accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore,
protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or
slander.
-- Mary McLeod Bethune
I believe that we are at the point now, in the United States,
where a movement is beginning to emerge. I think that the
calamity, the quagmire of the Iraq war, the outsourcing of jobs,
the drop-out of young people from the education system, the
monstrous growth of the prison-industrial complex, the planetary
emergency, which we are engulfed at the present moment, is
demanding that instead of just complaining about these things,
instead of just protesting about these things, we begin to look
for, and hope for, another way of living. And I think that--
that's where the movement-- I-- I see a movement beginning to
emerge, 'cause I see hope beginning to trump despair.
-- Grace Lee Boggs
* The strength of the movement is still something that you will
never see on camera, because it doesn't happen at the big
protests. But the strength of this movement is rooted in the
strength of its components and of the campaigns of its
components. So there are farm movements around the world; there
are environmental movements around the world; labor movements
around the world involved in daily struggles around living wages,
around protecting the rights of farmers to their seeds, and so
on. Those struggles continue on a daily basis; they have not gone
away.
-- John Cavanagh
"The first principle of non-violent action is that of
non-cooperation with everything humiliating."
-- Cesar Chavez
"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by
nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear
the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose
American hegemony.
-- Noam Chomsky
while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a
criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I
am not free.
-- Eugene V. Debs
* I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes
for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes
critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom
that exists in my country and for this I am eternally
grateful.
-- Johnny Depp
Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must
allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of
the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should
not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the
censor. -- William O. Douglas
-- Justice William O. Douglas
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands
it.
-- Albert Einstein
Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionists
and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted
doctrine.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to
do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think
that people want peace so much that one of these days governments
had better get out of the way and let them have it."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days
governments had better get out of the way and let them have
it."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
-- Betty Friedan
" It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is
better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest
is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had
a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a
fair chance.
-- Margaret Fuller
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 realize that they need not fear brute force, if they would but
know the soul within.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for
its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that
violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by
nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully
submitting to arrest and imprisonment.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it
demands respect for the opposite views.
~ Mohandas Gandhi
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language;
but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth,
and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish
to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! 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. 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
Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and
visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time,
gain in political significance.
-- Vaclav Havel
* Today women in many countries are taking part in various types
of movements of protest, some of which are serious struggles for
economic and social emancipation .
-- Kumari Jayawardena
"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much
a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person
has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across
than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and
personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative
protest."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr
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
-- Martin Luther King, Jr
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much
a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr
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. Again and again we must rise
to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul
force.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of
men.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The students I've been with these twenty years are looking for a
world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder
to hate, where learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our
hearts, minds, time, and money to a commitment that the force of
love, the force of truth, the force of justice, and the force of
organized resistance to corrupt power are seen as sane and the
force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs insane.
-- Colman McCarthy
King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead
relied on civil disobedience.
- Constance Baker Motley (First Black Woman in the U.S. to become
a Federal Judge)
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be
driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are
not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write,
to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the
moment, unpopular.
-- Edward R. Murrow
I believe that Gandhi was correct. Non-violent civil disobedience
is the only way to bring about change that allows people to enjoy
the change and not get killed in the process.
-- Edward James Olmos, actor
We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our
efforts to become law-makers.
--Emmeline Pankhurst
* The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble
protest of the American people against the power of incorporated
wealth.
-- Wendell Phillips
Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at
once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring
voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but
get something.
-- Wendell Phillips
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.
-- A. Philip Randolph
Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and
communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only
preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have
turned everything upside down.
-- Oscar Romero
When we allow one group of people to look down upon another, then
we may for a short time bring hardship on some particular group
of people, but the real hardship and the real wrong is done to
democracy and to our nation as a whole. We are then breeding
people who cannot live under a democratic form of government but
must be controlled by force. We have but to look out into the
world to see how easy it is to become stultified, to accept
without protest wrongs done to others, and to shift the burden of
decision and responsibility for any action onto some vague thing
called a government or some individual called a leader.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but
alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped
only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load
weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic
outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.
-- Arundhati Roy
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. -- Bayard
Rustin
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is
seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of
the vices.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too
frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of
Americanismthe right to criticize, the right to hold
unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent
thought.
-- Margaret Chase Smith
I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on
the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the
person who chooses to do it. Martin Sheen The burning of
rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and
opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of
external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe
The developed world has a vast, under-utilized asset that is not
being leveraged to its best advantage: idealistic people who want
to make the world a better place. For most of a century,
idealistic people have been encouraged to use anger, protest,
lobbying, and legal action in order to make the world a better
place. While most certainly some of these behaviors and
activities were necessary, we have reached the point at which the
social benefit of such behaviors is decreasing. We have reached
the point at which creation, rather than attack, ought to be the
first obligation of reformers. The social entrepreneurship
movement is the first tip of this iceberg. We want to create a
world in which all idealists realize that the creation of new
enterprises is the most powerful way to make positive change in
the world. If all the energy that is currently invested in
zero-sum political conflict was gradually transferred to the
committed creation of sustainable enterprises, the cumulative
impact on behalf of the good would be extraordinary.
-- Michael Strong
"Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of
his own family and does not do so is punished for the
transgressions of his family. Whoever is able to protest against
the transgressions of his community and does not do so is
punished for the transgressions of his community. Whoever is able
to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and
does not do so is punished for the transgressions of the entire
world."
-- Talmud
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must
be slaves.
-- Henry David Thoreau
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It
is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much
as for the right.
-- Henry David Thoreau
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself
to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may
still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his
duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no
thought longer, not to give it practically his support. 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.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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.
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is
wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot
shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to
be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to
your country, let men label you as they may.
-- Mark Twain
When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to
leaders.
~Veterans Fast for Life
Resistance is the secret of joy!
~Alice Walker
* A downtrodden class... will never be able to make an effective
protest until it achieves solidarity.
-- H.G. Wells
* There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,
but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
-- Elie Wiesel
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided
to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in
the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere -- so organized, so
subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive --
that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in
condemnation of it.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy;
it is absolutely essential to it.
-- Howard Zinn
Civil Disobedience Quotes