Matt Damon reads from Howard Zinn’s speech “The Problem is Civil Obedience” (November 1970)
Howard Zinn’s perspective – http://youtu.be/RF7GoDYEbfQ | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF7GoDYEbfQ
In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”
― Howard Zinn
“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”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”
― Henry David Thoreau
“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.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49
“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”
― Tariq Ali
“Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public’s acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it…
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.”
― Howard Zinn,
“A dog can bite you but you must not bite the dog! Your every movement in life must be peaceful; otherwise you lose your ethical superiority! Nonviolent civil disobedience is a genius; no power can beat it; use it when necessary!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one’s country, one’s fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”
― Howard Zinn
Gandhi Quotes…
- An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
- Hate the sin, love the sinner.
- I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
- Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
- Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
- Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.
