
“You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.”
1960s, What Has Happened to America? (1967)
“You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.”
Narrated 'Abdullah Volume 9, Book 89, Number 258 http://web.archive.org/web/20111004120922/http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/089-sbt.php#009.089.258
Sunni Hadith
1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 5.
Young India (1 May 1922)
1920s
“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”
Source: The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
1920s, Law and Order (1920)
Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: The respect for authority, the presumption in favor of those who have won intellectual reputation, is within reasonable limits, both prudent and becoming. But it should not be carried too far, and there are some things especially as to which it behooves us all to use our own judgment and to maintain free minds. For not only does the history of the world show that undue deference to authority has been the potent agency through which errors have been enthroned and superstitions perpetuated, but there are regions of thought in which the largest powers and the greatest acquirements cannot guard against aberrations or assure deeper insight. One may stand on a box and look over the heads of his fellows, but he no better sees the stars. The telescope and the microscope reveal depths which to the unassisted vision are closed. Yet not merely do they bring us no nearer to the cause of suns and animal-cula, but in looking through them the observer must shut his eyes to what lies about him. That intension is at the expense of extension is seen in the mental as in the physical sphere. A man of special learning may be a fool as to common relations. And that he who passes for an intellectual prince may be a moral pauper there are examples enough to show.