“There is no justice in following unjust laws.”
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (July 2008) http://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto.
Context: There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
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Aaron Swartz 16
computer programmer and internet-political activist 1986–2013Related quotes

1960s, (1963)

“An unjust law is no law at all.”
On Free Choice Of The Will, Book 1, § 5

“A unjust law, is no law at all.”
Source: Bibelausgaben, Die Bibel nach der Übersetzung Martin Luthers, mit Apokryphen, Neue Rechtschreibung, Schwarz

1960s, (1963)
“To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice.”
Source: Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (1982), Ch. 3 : The Ethics of Magic, p. 41
Context: To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence.”
Non-Violence in Peace & War (1962) Vol. 2, edited by Mahadev Haribhai Desai, p. 144
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
Context: An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s