Obedience Quotes

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don't do what I'm told, but I might do what you want if you ask me nicely.

Cassandra Clare

Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.

John Ruskin

It is much safer to obey, than to govern.

Thomas Kempis

Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Alfred Hitchcock

Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Alfred Hitchcock

The ship that will not obey the helm will have to obey the rocks.

English Proverb

There is no shame in taking orders from those who themselves have learned to obey.

William Edward Forster

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

Malcolm X

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.

Joan Baez

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.

Joan Baez

Every good servant does not all commands.

William Shakespeare

A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sai

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

Simone Weil

No principal is so noble, as there is none more holy, than that of a true obedience.

Henry Giles

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

William S. Burroughs

Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Those who know the least obey the best.

George Farquhar

It is my contention that civil disobediences are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.

Hannah Arendt

Always obey your parents when they are present.

Mark Twain