QUOTES OF THE DAY

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”

Aristotle, Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics

“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, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.”

Henry David Thoreau

“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, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“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, Public Power in the Age of Empire

“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.”

Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

Howard Zinn

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, Solitude & Life Without Principle