Quotes about Civil Obedience

Russian Orthodox Church

The Church not only prescribes for her children to obey state power regardless of the convictions and faith of its bearers, but also prays for it.

Antonin Scalia

The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible…. The Lord…did justice – through His minister, the state.

Philip Francis

The submission of free people to the executive authority of government, is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted.

Fritz Kreisler

What impressed me particularly in Vienna was the strict order everywhere. No mob disturbances of any kind, in spite of the greatly increased liberty and relaxation of police regulations.

Book of Romans

Let every person be obedient to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ... the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer

This is one of the passages of the Bible that Christian Kings cited in expecting obedience. Most of the monarchs took this passage to mean that God had selected and appointed them to rule.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I know that the Southern People prefer a Govt. of their own but as soon as it is demonstrated that there cannot be an independent Southern Confederacy, many then will yield obedience rather than lose their Estates.

The early Union military leadership was so poor and timid that it was not clearly demonstrated that a Confederacy was not viable until later in the war, and the Southerners possessed an extraordinary capacity for ignoring reality and self-delusion, that it was not demonstrated until Grant’s major victories and Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Southern East Coast that an independent South was not going to be.

Henry Clay Frick

What is going to rule our great commonwealth, the mob or the law?

Will Durant

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

Hubert Humphrey

We can not expect to breed respect for law and order among people who do not share the fruits of our freedom.

Pierre Bayle

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

The term “magistrates” refers to chief executives such as Governors, Mayors, Kings, etc. and not members of a judicial branch per se. For example the President of the United States is sometimes referred to as the Chief Magistrate of the Nation.”

Petra Kelly

... the state is not absolute, and loyalty to the state cannot be absolute.

William F. Buckley Jr.

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.

Herbert Hoover

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

Thomas Jefferson

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

Howard Zinn

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

Stevie Wonder

Law and order comes from having respect for one another.

Howard Zinn

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .

Tom Hodgkinson

The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.

David Milch

What cops are hired to do is to control people who will not abide by the social contract.

Joseph Stiglitz

Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can’t function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations.

Will Durant

Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.

Kimberly Guilfoyle

I think most Americans have an innate respect for the police and for their authority.

John Stuart Mill

In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.

Horace

Of what use are laws, inoperative through public immortality?
[Lat., Quid leges sine moribus
Vanae proficiunt?]

Roberto Cantalupo

The basic principle that governs the relation between a state and its people --a total and unconditional subordination and submission of individuals and classes to the state…

This is just the opposite of the American Democracy in which the government serves the citizens rather than the Fascist opposite notion.

Civil Obedience Quotes