Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

There is no justice in following unjust laws.

What I call the law of satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing therefrom.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

The privilege of resisting or disobeying a particular law or order accrues only to him who gives willing and unswerving obedience to the laws laid down for him.

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

No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual.

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

Call it peace or call it treason / call it love or call it reason / but I ain't marching anymore

Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen.

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

Better still - your history has shown how powerful a moral catharsis expressed through popular resistance to injustice can sometimes be; I have in mind the grassroots opposition to the Vietnam War.

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

There are times … when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.

I have the deepest, deepest respect for these guys who are actually fighting for democracy in countries far away.

Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place.

What is right is not always the same as what is legal

Silence does not equal patriotism. Obedience is not the American way.

Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering.

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust ... is in reality expressing the highest respect for law ... We will not obey your evil laws.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

The highest form of patriotism is dissent.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

Individual civil disobedience was everybody's inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life.