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.
Civil Disobedience Quotes
While the State may respectfully require obedience on many matters, it cannot violate the moral nature of a man, convert him into a serviceable criminal, and expect his loyalty and devotion.
I will have no laws. I will acknowledge none. I protest against every law which an authority calling itself necessary imposes upon my free will.
The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it is invalid on its face.
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.
