Civil Disobedience Quotes - Page 9

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

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Tree, Branches, Different

  Mahatma Gandhi (1951). “Satyagraha: Non-violent Resistance”

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• 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

  Heart, Soldier, Mind

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• 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

  Quiet, Satyagraha, Pursuit

  Mahatma Gandhi (1927). “Young India, 1924-1926”

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• 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

  Strong, Opportunity, Color

  "Sierra Club Turns to Civil Disobedience to Stop Keystone Pipeline". Interview with Kate Sheppard, www.motherjones.com. January 25, 2013.

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• 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

  Done, Realizing, Construction

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Wish, Mexico

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.92, Xist Publishing

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• 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.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Office, Wish, Done

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.294, Simon and Schuster

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• Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Blood, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

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• To engage in civil disobedience is to feel the abundance of courage, the gratitude for a democracy that still invites us to speak from our hearts, to act from our conscience and have faith in the consequences of moral action. Abundance is a form of consciousness.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Gratitude, Heart, Democracy

  "Exclusive: Terry Tempest Williams On Sacred Rage, Abundance, and the Upcoming White House Tar Sands Pipeline Action". Interview with Jerry Cope, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 17, 2011.

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• 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.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strong, India, States

  Mahatma Gandhi (1941). “The Indian States' Problem”

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• The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Persistence, Embodiment, Succeed

  Mahatma Gandhi (1927). “Young India, 1924-1926”

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• Civil disobedience is an act of love.

  Tim DeChristopher

  Acts Of Love, Disobedience

  "Civil disobedience is an act of love | An interview with Tim DeChristopher". Interview with Leslee Goodman, moonmagazine.org. December 1, 2014.

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• The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Government, Population, Should

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Fact and Fiction”, p.283, Routledge

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• Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

  Howard Zinn

  Problem, Obedience, Starvation

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• 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

  Political, Peaceful, Necessary Change

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• You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history.

  Bill McKibben

  Change, Morning, Work

  "The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium" by Bill McKibben, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 5, 2011.

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• . . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Men, Firsts

  Civil Disobedience (1849)

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• 

  You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

  Malcolm X

  Inspirational, Peace, Patriotic

  Malcolm X (1990). “Malcolm X on Afro-American History”, Pathfinder Press

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• If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Respect, Law, Desire

  "A Treasury of Jewish Quotations". Book by Joseph L. Baron, 1996.

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• It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Motivational, Respect, Law

  Civil Disobedience (1849)

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