Kathy Acker 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.

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

The law, that is what makes men stay honest.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.

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.

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.

There is no equality between that which is right and that which is wrong.

No moderate man views it in any other light than as an axiom, or self-evident truth, namely, that if any excuse for disobedience were once admitted, or any indulgence granted to these tender-conscienced inferiors there would be an end of all government in an instant; neither commands nor obedience could proceed one step further, but every individual instrument of power in that fatal society, astonished at the monstrous phenomenon, would stare at one another; all the wheels of the political machine would stop at once. nay would split into ten thou-sand pieces; every relation and connection of their parts would be instantly dissolved, and the beautiful whole would rush into a wild chaos of anarchy and confusion.

Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct faults. He who obeys them because they are just obeys a justice which is imaginary and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more.

In a democracy, you must follow the will of the majority, which may be right or wrong, moral or immoral, just or unjust. If that's the ruling of the majority that is what you should follow, respect, and obey — although you may continue to disagree with it.

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.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

Morality is the object of government.

We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld.

No man ought to be condemned for exhorting people to pursue justice in a certain line, though he may foresee that in the pursuit of that justice the opposition given to those who are proceeding in a just course may produce collision, and that collision lead to the commission of crime; but our duty, as I conceive, is to seek for the injustice, and there to impute the crime… It is to that injustice, and not to those who pursue a just course for the attainment of a right end, that the guilt is to be ascribed.

We have a society now where obedience to the law is really a choice, an option only.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

In our society, authority derives from justice, and in our society, learning to live with authority should derive from and aid learning to understand and to feel justice.

I just want everybody to follow the law.

I'm a law-and-order girl: I like people who do the right thing.

I don't believe that there are two sides to a story when it's a matter of right versus wrong. It just doesn't work that way.

A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.