On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
1849
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
1849
In 1849, a man named Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax that would support a government prosecuting an unjust war and maintaining slavery. The experience crystallized an idea that would reshape the moral landscape of the twentieth century: that individual conscience is not subordinate to state authority, and that citizens have not just the right but the duty to resist unjust laws through nonviolent refusal. This concise, fiery essay argues that governments derive their legitimacy only from the consent of the governed, and that when a state commits injustice, ordinary people become complicit through their obedience. Thoreau contends that the only true obligation any person holds is to do what they know to be right, regardless of what the law demands. He writes with quiet intensity about the moral bankruptcy of a society that maintains peace through slavery and wages wars of conquest. The essay's call to personal integrity has echoed through every generation since, inspiring Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and anyone who has ever faced the choice between comfort and conscience.
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“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.””
— Henry David Thoreau
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.””
— Henry David Thoreau
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Thoreau, Henry David. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Lex, lex-books.com/book/on-the-duty-of-civil-disobedience-da894151-21a3-456f-b062-6a8b409b29f8.Thoreau, H. D. (1849). On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-the-duty-of-civil-disobedience-da894151-21a3-456f-b062-6a8b409b29f8Thoreau, Henry David. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-the-duty-of-civil-disobedience-da894151-21a3-456f-b062-6a8b409b29f8.
