Insubordination

Insubordination is the act of willfully disobeying one's superior.

Quotes

• The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.
  • Aristotle, Metaphysics 982.a15, W. Ross, trans., The Basic Works of Aristotle (2001), p. 691

• I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
  • Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

• When [Diogenes of Sinope] was sold as a slave, he endured it most nobly. For on a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates under the command of Scirpalus, conveyed to Crete and exposed for sale. When the auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling men." Thereupon he pointed to a certain Corinthian with a fine purple border to his robe, the man named Xeniades above-mentioned, and said, “Sell me to this man; he needs a master.”
  • Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 6.73

See also

• Civil disobedience
• Hierarchy
• Nonviolent resistance