On Civil Disobedience Quotes & Sayings

Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

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

Civil disobedience is an act of love. — Tim DeChristopher

If we don't rebel, if we're not physically in an active rebellion, then it's spiritual death. — Chris Hedges

[Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty. — Plutarch

The Birmingham campaign was a repeat of SCLC's 1961 campaign in Albany, Georgia, which turned out a complete failure. King was banking on being able to fill up the jails and still have recruits willing to engage in civil disobedience, shutting the system down, but the authorities simply made their jails "bottomless" by shipping detainees elsewhere. A couple years later, black residents of Albany rioted, suggesting what they thought about their experience with nonviolence (these riots are not mentioned in most chronologies of the movement). — Anonymous

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season. — Martin Luther King Jr.

So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has come up with is to say that violent revolutions can be avoided (and therefore, violent mobs legitimately suppressed) if 'the people' are understood to have the right to challenge the laws through nonviolent civil disobedience. — David Graeber

Voting for the right is doing nothing for it. — Henry David Thoreau

Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government. It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs. — Ron Paul

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, — Larry Klayman

Civil disobedience's main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not. — Noam Chomsky

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

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

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

DESEGREGATE THE BUSES WITH THIS 7 POINT PROGRAM:

1. Pray for guidance.
2. Be courteous and friendly.
3. Be neat and clean.
4. Avoid loud talk.
5. Do not argue.
6. Report incidents immediately.
7. Overcome evil with good.
Sponsored by Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance
Rev. A. L. Davis, Pres.
Rev. J. E. Poindexter, Secretary — John Howard Griffin

If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God. — Francis A. Schaeffer

It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be. Indeed, they will be mentally healthier if they do not suppress rage, but vent it constructively and use its energy peacefully but forcefully to cripple the operations of an oppressive society. Civil disobedience can utilize the militance wasted in riots to seize clothes or groceries many do not even want. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience. — Constance Baker Motley

Gandhi said that only people with a high regard for the law were qualified for civil disobedience. — Mark Shepard

We demand justice," Jeff says. "we don't have it, the world is a mess because of assholes who think they can steal everything and get away with it. So we have to overwhelm them and get back to justice."
"And conditions are ripe, is that what you're saying?"
"Very ripe. People are pissed off. They're scared for their kids. That's the moment things can tip. If it works like Chenoweth's law says it does, then you only need about fifteen percent of a population to engage in civil disobedience, and the rest see it and support it, and the oligarchy falls. You get a new legal regime. It doesn't have to get all bloody and lead to a thugocracy of violent revolutionaries. If can work. And conditions are ripe. — Kim Stanley Robinson

In placing civil disobedience before constructive work I was wrong and I did not profit by the Himalayan blunder that I had committed. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. — Aristotle.

I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously. — Terry Tempest Williams

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. [February 23, 1931] — Winston S. Churchill

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. — Nancy Gibbs

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head. — Mahatma Gandhi

Rioting is not a movement. It is not an act of civil disobedience. I think it is a mistake for people to consider disorganized action, mayhem, and attacks on other people and property as an extension of any kind of movement. It is not. It is simply an explosion of emotion. That's all. There is nothing constructive about it. It is destructive. — John Lewis

Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it ...
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did. — Howard Zinn

There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, 'New Museum,' to be an act of civil disobedience. It's not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It's painting as insurgency. — Richard Phillips

Civil disobedience can help to focus attention on a particular injustice. It was used historically to highlight wrongs in society - turning ancient redwood forests into paper towels or preventing people from sitting down at lunch counters because of the color of their skin. On climate change, we have not seen strong leadership coming from Washington, DC.In particular the president has an enormous opportunity to follow up on his inaugural speech with a concerted course of action to aggressively take on a clean energy transition. — Michael Brune

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. — Mahatma Gandhi

King became the movement's voice and launched a new phase of mass protest.
He was a disciple of the teachings of Gandhi and Thoreau, as well as of Jesus. He
emphasized nonviolent civil disobedience. The civil rights struggle was not against
whites, but against injustice; its most important weapons were not anger and hate
but love and forgiveness, King declared.
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On — Anthony R. Fellow

Little attention was paid, because the German people, no matter how hungry, remained obedient. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The question deserves to be asked: Is hating one's nation really such a bad thing? Or perhaps more importantly, after the crimes our government has committed, what moral self-respecting person can truly love this nation? — Michel Templet

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience. — Al Sharpton

If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. — Henry David Thoreau

The basis of Gandhi's nonviolence is to appeal to the good in others and evoke sympathy to one's cause through self-suffering. — Arun Gandhi

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. — Mahatma Gandhi

It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us. — B.R. Ambedkar

It is alarming ... to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience. — Winston Churchill

I am at a crossroads; I have always been against armed opposition ... I have chosen civil disobedience. But I will apologize to my people if there are funerals coming out of prisons. I will criticize myself and I won't be the mayor of Diyarbakir. — Osman Baydemir

Women have to risk civil disobedience for their rights. — Sonia Johnson

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 ... 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

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. — Marvin Ammori

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

I find this proposed amendment very, very, very, very shocking. And immoral. And, you know, if civil disobedience is the way to go about change, then I think a lot of people will be going to San Francisco. — Rosie O'Donnell

True civil disobedience ... compels the state to resort to power. — Archibald Cox

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. — Ron Paul

Immunity is a public space. And it can be occupied by those who choose not to carry immunity. For some of the mothers I know, a refusal to vaccinate falls under a broader resistance to capitalism. But refusing immunity as a form of civil disobedience bears an unsettling resemblance to the very structure the Occupy movement seems to disrupt
a privileged 1 percent are sheltered from risk while they draw resources from the other 99 percent. — Eula Biss

I don't believe in eye-for-an-eye. The most incredible, sustainable, beautiful movements have been non-violent movements of civil disobedience. — Ellen Page

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. — Martin Luther King Jr.