Disobedience Quotes

“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
― Mae West, The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“We considered behaving, but it's against our nature.”
― O.R. Melling, The Book of Dreams

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Too often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.

We need to brace ourselves up and to realize that we are responsible for thoughts, attitudes, and actions. We need to reckon on the fact that we died to sin's reign, that it no longer has any dominion over us, that God has united us with the risen Christ in all His power and has given us the Holy Spirit to work in us. Only as we accept our responsibility and appropriate God's provisions will we make any progress in our pursuit of holiness.”
― Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

“DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary and Other Works

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is a man's original virtue.”
― Oscar Wilde

“[...] A society that drives its members to desperate solutions is a non-viable society, a society to be replaced.”
― Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld

“The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“In Kevin's book, unwitnessed disobedience is wasteful.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“...This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope.
p.124”
― Curtis White, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work

“Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey?”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“The Christian living in disobedience also lives devoid of joy and hope. But when he begins to understand that Christ has delivered him from the reign of sin, when he begins to see that he is united to Him who has all power and authority and that it is possible to walk in obedience, he begins to have hope, and as he hopes in Christ, he begins to have joy. In the strength of this joy, he begins to overcome the sins that have so easily entangle him. He then finds that the joy of a holy walk is infinitely more satisfying than the fleeting pleasures of sin. But to experience this joy, we must make some choices. We must choose to forsake sin, not only because it is defeating to us but because it grieves the heart of God.”
― Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

“I have always tried to be obedient regarding important matters like not being scalded to death by burning oil, but when public opinion takes a route far from one's inner conviction, one cannot value disobedience too highly.”
― Barbara Dana, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson

“If now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be universal law, for that is impossible for us; on the contrary, we will that the opposite should remain a universal law, only we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favor or (just for this time only) in favor of our inclination. Consequently, if we considered all cases from one and the same point of view, namely, that of reason, we should find a contradiction in our own will, namely, that a certain principle should be objectively necessary as a universal law, and yet subjectively should not be universal, but admit of exceptions. As, however, we at one moment regard our action from the point of view of a will wholly conformed to reason, and then again look at the same action from the point of view of a will affected by inclination, there is not really any contradiction, but an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. Now, although this cannot be justified in our own impartial judgement, yet it proves that we do really recognize the validity of the categorical imperative and (with all respect for it) only allow ourselves a few exceptions which we think unimportant and forced from us.”
― Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

“Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choyce,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“To be obedient to/in an oppressive and suppressive system means I am weak. In a place where civil disobedience should be a new culture”
― Seun Ayilara

“Fighting to hold on to what God said to let go of is an outright denial of His omniscience.”
― Andrena Sawyer

“Dwelling within the congregation, she noted the familiar soup of thoughr and emotion. There were angers there, bitters hatreds, fear and boredom and resentment and guilt ands sorrow. She saw herself from outside herself. Am I really? she thought. Can that be me, that person who appears so strange to all these others? She saw herself through a dozen pairs of eyes, each one registering her oddness with fear or disgust or confusion. She smiled at the people as she passed through them, saying, ah yes, you think I am strange. But I know something you don't know.”
― Naomi Alderman , Disobedience

“Disobedience leads to discord.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Destruction lies in disobedience.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Remember this; downfall of a man is never the end of his life.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Disobedience to God leads to discord.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Destruction lies in disobedience to God.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The act of disobedience set Adam and Eve free and opened their eyes. They recognized each other as strangers and the world outside them as strange and even hostile. Their act of disobedience broke the primary bond with nature and made them individuals. “Original sin,” far from corrupting man, set him free; it was the beginning of history. Man had to leave the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on his own powers and to become fully human.”
― Erich Fromm, On Disobedience and Other Essays

“Individually, a single person cannot stop government tyranny, but an individual can be the start of a movement of defiance and disobedience, which progresses Tyranny through Revolution. We can evolve past the need for government, the need to be controlled, and an endless cycle of tyranny that has lasted thousands of years. But to get to this point, defiance in the face of tyranny is a must which would be the catalyst to end Tyranny and progress us to the beginning of Revolution.”
― Jeffrey Hann, COVID19 - SHORT PATH TO 'YOU'LL OWN NOTHING. AND YOU'LL BE HAPPY.': Welcome to the new Age of Tyranny

“Not loving is flouting God’s order”
― Daniel ANIKOR, Wells of inspiration: Sage's Secret

“The price of disobedience is death.”
― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

“Civil disobedience is being disobedient to the specific “requirement” but still honoring the position of authority. If you are civilly disobedient, you will be subjected to the consequences of that disobedience.”
― Curtis Ferrell, Dual Citizenship: Living as a Christian in America