Wendell Phillips Quotes

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

Statutes against Fundamental Morality are void

There is no justice in following unjust laws.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

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.

The criminal law tries to define moral standards.

Should one break in and free the animals? That is illegal, but the obligation to obey the law is not absolute. It was justifiably broken by those who helped runaway slaves in the American South, to mention only one possible parallel.

That we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. There was no such thing in former days. The people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for their breach.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them?

"Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality - a God-given force - be they brought about by the State or other individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St. Peter when he said to the rulers of his day: "Shall we obey God or man?"

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.

A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.

Forget the laws. If the laws don't make sense, if they run contrary to your conscience, you have to disobey them.

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?

No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law.

I think that the only ultimate guide we have is our conscience, and if the law of the land goes against our conscience I think we should disobey the law.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ' an unjust law is no law at all.

Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.

It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.

I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws... What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law.