1641) There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.

Hannah Arendt
Crises of the Republic (1972) [CQ]

1642) One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." [...] One who break an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that 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.
"Letter From a Birmingham Jail" (4/16/1963)
Why We Can't Wait (1964) [ALQ]

1643) When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignity of the people to the sovereignity of mankind.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1835) [ALQ]