Any time you see a talking head advocating "national interest" above what is right and good, remember this saying
The man of character cares about what is right,
the inferior man cares about his advantage.
— K’ung-fu-tzu, according to the Analects, 4.16 (225 BC)
A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper.
He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.
— Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, the Limits of Government Activity
Any time someone tells you that even an unfair law needs to be obeyed, ask him if he thinks Schindler was doing the wrong thing
You assist an unjust administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil.
A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul.
Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.
– Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance
Common Sense, the book advocating secession from the British empire and credited with starting the Revolution, was the top-selling book of the 18th century, globally.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir.
The examples of particular injustice, or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But if they universally have a persuation, grounded upon manifest evidence,that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it?
–John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 