Civil Disobedience Quotes

When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust ... is in reality expressing the highest respect for law ... We will not obey your evil laws.

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

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.

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering.

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha.

Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India.

Mass civil disobedience is like an earthquake, a sort of general upheaval on the political plane.

Satyagraha, of which civil resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life.

I say, break the law.

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.

No matter what the cause was and wherever it was, Indian governments must never requisition the services of British soldiers to deal with civil disturbances.

Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity.

We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.

The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man's life must not be frequent.

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in thegreat sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also,and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they arecommonly treated as enemies by it.

I care so deeply about this matter that I'm willing to take on the legal penalties, to sit in this prison cell, to sacrifice my freedom, in order to show you how deeply I care. Because when you see the depth of my concern, and how civil I am in going about this, you're bound to change your mind about me, to abandon your rigid, unjust position, and to let me help you see the truth of my cause.

I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,--if ten honest men only,--ay, if one HONESTman, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.

Complete civil disobedience is a state of peaceful rebellion, a refusal to obey every single state-made law.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws.

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.

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer".

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.

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.

Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly.

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?

Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience.

Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

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.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

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.

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

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.

Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience.

It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdrawand stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with,--the dollar is innocent,--but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation.

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

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

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.

The only true resistance to this Government... [is] to cease to co-operate with it.

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers.

Civil disobedience and excitement and intoxication go ill together.

In satyagraha, a courted imprisonment carries its own praise.

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

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

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

We must treat arrest as the normal condition of the life of a non-co-operator.

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?

Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.

Civil disobedience is a stimulation for the fighters and a challenge to the opponent, in the present instance, authority.