Walter Lippmann Quotes

When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Anyone who takes it upon himself ... to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

If the law commands me to sin, I will break it.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

Since the state is a community of human beings it is as truly subject to the moral law as any private society.

Ye shall not do ... every man what is right in his own eyes.

Former good legislators have erred, and those of the best polity may err again, and enact laws which ought to be disobeyed and resisted.

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 man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.

You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed. It's inescapable.

We show deference to the civil authorities when they respect the divine origin of their power and when they serve the people with objective reference to the law of God.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Civil disobedience is the right of all men when we believe breaking man's law is needed to preserve God's law.

Why does everyone think that he can be decent enough without the policeman, but that the club is needed for "the others?

The good of the people is the chief law.

Be you never so high the law is above you.

Disobedience to be "civil" must be sincere, respectful, restrained, never defiant, and it must have no ill-will or hatred behind it.

If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws of God—if they inflict injury upon the Church—... then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to render obedience.

If any considerable number of citizens who are generally law abiding think that some particular statute is bad enough in itself or dangerous enough in its indirect effects to make it worthwhile to block its enforcement, they can do so.

If a thousand [citizens] 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.