In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his 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.
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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 the law.
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I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
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People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world.
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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 the law.
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When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
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There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.
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Punishment is justice for the unjust.
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To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system thereby the oppressed become the oppressor.
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The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.
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The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful.
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Without country you have neither name, token, voice, nor rights, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the Peoples. You are the bastards of Humanity. Soldiers without a banner, Israelites among the nations, you will find neither faith nor protection; none will be sureties for you. Do not beguile yourselves with the hope of emancipation from unjust social conditions if you do not first conquer a Country for yourselves.
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A God all mercy is a God unjust.
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... Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
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An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.
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'Civil disobedience has been used as an effective means of bringing about social change throughout history. Thoreau/ Gandhi/ Martin Luther King, Jr. all practiced nonviolent civil disobedience. It allows us to follow the 'moral law,' and it attracts media to the event enabling us to tell the whole world what really goes on behind closed doors. Many expressed dismay at our willingness to break the laws which we consider to be unjust, to them this quote from Thoreau in his famous essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. If a law is of such nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law! Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.'' (FoA's 'Act-tionLine')
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I solemnly swear to be a good knight of the Round Table of Camelot and to never use violence without purpose, never to fall to murder or treason. I swear on my honor to give mercy when asked and to protect the innocents and to enforce their rights. And I promise to never fight in any unjust cause or to fight for personal gain. This oath I take upon my knighthood in the Round Table of Camelot.
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He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted ...
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Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealous will instantly inspire the inclination to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive...
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I know no method to secure the repeal of bad, obnoxious, or unjust laws so effective as their strict execution.
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I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
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In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.
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One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.
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How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.
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One who breaks an unjust 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.
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We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey. (On dismissing 12,000 striking air traffic controllers)
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By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a noble animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward--you will never get her full confidence again.
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The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
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We protest against unjust criticism, but we accept unearned applause.
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They have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves
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