
Bk. 1, ch. 6; as translated by Henry Graham Dakyns in Cyropaedia (2004) p. 29.
Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC
A collection of quotes on the topic of obedience, god, people, law.
Bk. 1, ch. 6; as translated by Henry Graham Dakyns in Cyropaedia (2004) p. 29.
Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC
Source: Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
This statement was widely used as an abolitionist and feminist slogan in the 19th century and has sometimes been attributed to Anthony, who famously used it, but cited it as an "old revolutionary maxim"; it has also frequently been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, and to Benjamin Franklin, who has been cited as having proposed it as the motto of the United States, as well as to English theologian William Tyndale. The earliest definite citations of a source yet found in research for Wikiquote indicates that it was declared by Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet after the overthrow of Dominion of New England Governor Edmund Andros in relation to the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, as quoted in Official Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention: assembled May 4th, 1853 (1853) by the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, p. 502. It is also quoted as a maxim that arose after the overthrow of Andros in A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore (1883) by Samuel Adams Drake. p. 426
Misattributed
Variant: Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.
Source: Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
Misattributed
Nahj al-Balagha
Babur writing about the battle against the Rajput Confederacy led by Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar. In Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 547-572.
Socrates, p. 145
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
“Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.”
As quoted in General Robert E. Lee After Appomattox (1922), by Franklin Lafayette Riley, p. 18
Third State of the Union Address (7 December 1903)
1900s
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
This was used as an abolitionist and feminist slogan in the 19th century and has sometimes been attributed to Tyndale, but more frequently to Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, who has been cited as having wanted it to be the motto of the United States, as well as to Susan B. Anthony, who cited it as an "old Revolutionary maxim". The earliest definite citations of a source yet found in research for Wikiquote indicates that it was declared by Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet after the overthrow of Dominion of New England Governor Edmund Andros in relation to the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, as quoted in Official Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention: assembled May 4th, 1853 (1853) by the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, p. 502. It is also quoted as a maxim that arose after the overthrow of Andros in A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore (1883) by Samuel Adams Drake. p. 426
Misattributed
Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions
Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220
Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997)
In Concert
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 401.
Joanna Denny (2006) Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0306814749, p. 140.
Sir Robert Peel
Biographical Studies (1907)
“If thou make any law or establish any custom for the general good, be the first to submit thyself thereto; then does a people show more regard for justice nor refuse submission when it has seen their author obedient to his own laws. The world shapes itself after its ruler's pattern, nor can edicts sway men's minds so much as their monarch's life; the unstable crowd ever changes along with the prince.”
In commune iubes si quid censesque tenendum, <br/>primus iussa subi: tunc observantior aequi <br/>fit populus nec ferre negat, cum viderit ipsum <br/>auctorem parere sibi. componitur orbis <br/>regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus <br/>humanos edicta valent quam vita regentis.
In commune iubes si quid censesque tenendum,
primus iussa subi: tunc observantior aequi
fit populus nec ferre negat, cum viderit ipsum
auctorem parere sibi. componitur orbis
regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus
humanos edicta valent quam vita regentis.
Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti, lines 296-301 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Claudian/De_IV_Consulatu_Honorii*.html#296.
“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”
Brickhill 1954, p. 44. Note: (also quoted as "...for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.") In Reach for the Sky, this quote is attributed to Harry Day, the Royal Flying Corps First World War fighter ace.
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
Other Eastland quote against Brown
Unsourced
(Letter to President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, 5 December 1987).
October 2016 when he was being Interviewed by the Judicial Service Commission [citation needed]
Circular Letter to the Governours of the several States (18 June 1783). Misreported as "I make it my constant prayer that God would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion; without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation", in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 315
1780s
1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)
Jim Caviezel on what he learned playing St. Luke—and why he thinks “We don’t love Jesus enough” http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/11/jim-caviezel-on-what-he-learned-playing-st-luke-and-why-he-thinks-we-dont-love-jesus-enough/ (March 11, 2018)
§ 116
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 374
Religious Wisdom
“In history obedience rarely pays; what pays is defiance.”
Source: The Left Alternative (2009), p. 8
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-07.html The Large Catechism by Martin Luther, Translated by F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau Published in: Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921) pp. 565-773, (1529)
“Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
An Essay on Toleration (1667), quoted in Mark Goldie (ed.), Locke: Political Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 151-152.
“God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.”
25
Fireflies (1928)
Letter to Dr. Covel Feb. 21, (1688-9) Thirteen Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to J. Covel, D.D. (1848)
Context: 1. Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves, and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When, therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases...
Speech in House of Commons, as recorded (in third person) in the | minutes of 20 June, 1839 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1839/jun/20/education-adjourned-debate#S3V0048P0_18390620_HOC_4.
1830s
Context: [It appears to me that] the Society of Education, that school of philosophers, were, with all their vaunted intellect and learning, fast returning to the system of a barbarous age, the system of a paternal government. Wherever was found what was called a paternal government was found a state education. It had been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience was to commence tyranny in the nursery. There was a country in which education formed the only qualification for office. That was, therefore, a country which might be considered as a normal school and pattern society for the intended scheme of education. That country was China. These paternal governments were rather to be found in the east than in the west, and if the hon. Member for Waterford asked [me] for the most perfect programme of public education, if he asked [me] to point out a system at once the most profound and the most comprehensive, [I] must give him the system of education which obtained in Persia. Leaving China and Persia and coming to Europe, [I] found a perfect system of national education in Austria, the China of Europe, and under the paternal government of Prussia. The truth was, that wherever everything was left to the government the subject became a machine.
“Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.”
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944)
Context: The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.
Salutation of the Virtues
Context: Hail, queen wisdom! May the Lord save thee with thy sister holy pure simplicity!
O Lady, holy poverty, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy humility!
O Lady, holy charity, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy obedience!
O all ye most holy virtues, may the Lord, from whom you proceed and come, save you!
There is absolutely no man in the whole world who can possess one among you unless he first die.
He who possesses one and does not offend the others, possesses all; and he who offends one, possesses none and offends all; and every one [of them] confounds vices and sins.
Holy wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickednesses.
Pure holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.
Holy poverty confounds cupidity and avarice and the cares of this world.
Holy humility confounds pride and all the men of this world and all things that are in the world.
Holy charity confounds all diabolical and fleshly temptations and all fleshly fears.
Holy obedience confounds all bodily and fleshly desires and keeps the body mortified to the obedience of the spirit and to the obedience of one's brother and makes a man subject to all the men of this world and not to men alone, but also to all beasts and wild animals, so that they may do with him whatsoever they will, in so far as it may be granted to them from above by the Lord.
1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Context: We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. … If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part, based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 54
“Learning does not require faith, just intellect. Obedience requires faith.”
Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery
“Let the consequences of your obedience be left up to God.”
“For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.”
Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
“The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.”
“Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous.”
Source: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 1
“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”
Source: Obedience to Authority
“Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.”
“Instant obedience will teach you more about God than a lifetime of Bible discussions.”
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
Source: Discipline: The Glad Surrender
“God not only loves the obedient - He enlightens them.”
“The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.”
“There are few things as nauseating as pure obedience.”
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 75, “Interlude—Obedience” (p. 593)
Source: Discipleship
“The trick to having obedient, unquestioning children was to have death be the other option”
Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
“Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.”
Entry (1960)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Decree on Serfs (1767) as quoted in A Source Book for Russian History Vol. 2 (1972) by George Vernadsky
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 453.
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)
Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 31-32
Source: Journal, p. 29
Letter to August Belmont (May 30, 1868), in J. W. Schuckers, The Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, (1874). p. 585.