“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

— Henry David Thoreau, book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

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Henry David Thoreau385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 6 (p. 59)

“I will say with certain intention, that I will see my laws strictly obeyed, and those who break them shall be watched and denounced.”

Edward VI of England (1537–1553) King of England, Tudor dynasty

I will fart all I want to without being told not to.
Source: Linda Porter (2010) Mary Tudor: The First Queen. p. 26: To his half-sister Mary I of England, who was ignoring his anti-Catholic laws. Greenwich, 28 January, 1551.

“We must enforce the laws and enforce them speedily. People will obey and follow our laws if there is certainty of punishment.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“We find only what we seek: nature has many secrets to give us, but she will not surrender them until we sit down patiently before her and obey her laws. Only by such submission do we receive.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 5, p. 85

“To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

“Justice. There's a thing we shall ever thirst after, and ever be parched. No. We content ourselves with law.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

“We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings

“Unlike pure theorists, we shall not assume at the outset that rational behavior exists or that rational behavior constitutes the topic of economic analysis. We shall study economic behavior as we find it. In describing and classifying different reactions, as well as the circumstances that elicit them, we shall raise the question whether and in what sense certain reactions may be called “rational.” After having answered that question and thus defined our terms, we shall study the fundamental problem: Under what conditions do more and under what conditions do less rational forms of behavior occur?”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 16; as cited in: Erik Angner and George Loewenstein. "Behavior economics," in: Philosophy of Economics, (2012), p. 657

“We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave, 2004) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Bush%20Betrayal.htm

“Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

[Voices from the Catholic Worker, Troester, Rosalie Riegle, 1993, Temple University Press, 114]

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

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Henry David Thoreau385

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