Variation: Disobedience to tyranny is obedience to God.
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This statement has often been attributed to Jefferson, as well as to Benjamin Franklin, who has been said to have proposed it as the motto of the United States, and sometimes to English theologian William Tyndale, or Susan B. Anthony, who used it, but cited it as an "old revolutionary maxim" — it was widely used as an abolitionist and feminist slogan in the 19th century. The earliest definite citations of a source yet found in research for Wikiquote indicates that the primary formulation 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.Thomas Jefferson
» Thomas Jefferson - all quotes »
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
Walter Bagehot
Unsourced variants: Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, and I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim.
Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, and I shall never pay a penny of this unjust fine.Susan B. Anthony
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Oscar Wilde
If obedience invariably leads to cruelty, disobedience is our moral duty.
Martin Firrell
He alone can remit sins who is appointed our Master by the Father of all; He only is able to discern obedience from disobedience.
Clement of Alexandria
Jefferson, Thomas
Jeffrey, Francis
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