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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau is expressing his belief in the importance of the individual. He had some big problems with the concept of majority rule. According to him, majority rule has nothing to do with right vs....
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Civil Disobedience
In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau is arguing that people have a duty to refuse to participate in evil. He says that people do not have the duty to actually go out and fix evils that occur in the...
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Civil Disobedience
In this statement by Thoreau, he is saying that the one person who is on the right side of the question counts for more than all the people who are on the wrong side of the question or issue. If...
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Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau never voted in an election. He expresses his opinions about voting in the 11th paragraph of “Civil Disobedience”: All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon,...
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Civil Disobedience
The first man to practice passive resistence, or "civil disobedience," as he coined the phrase, Henry David Thoreau chose to spend a night in jail rather than pay what he considered an unfair tax....
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Civil Disobedience
Among other rhetorical devices, Henry David Thoreau makes extensive use of rhetorical questions to further his argument in "Civil Disobedience." For example, in the second paragraph of the essay,...
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Civil Disobedience
If "tone" can be seen as "the attitude an author takes towards the work," then I think that Thoreau hits a very defiant tone in Civil Disobedience. This level of defiance can be seen in how Thoreau...
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Civil Disobedience
It's strange, but I think that Thoreau is probably more of the logic that suggests individuals have more of a moral clarity than government does. Thoreau holds little hope for the institution of...
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Civil Disobedience
A thesis statement is basically the topic of your paper, a statement of your opinion and what you intend to prove or discuss in the essay. Ordinarily, we're taught that the thesis statement should...
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Civil Disobedience
Henry Thoreau learned much about (a) the experience itself, (b) the townspeople’s reactions to it, (c) and, in more general terms, the relationship of the individual to and with his government. The...
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Civil Disobedience
When Henry Thoreau’s essay was first published in 1849, it was titled “Resistance to Civil Government.” In 1866, four years after his death, it was published again and re-named “Civil...
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Civil Disobedience
Throughout "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau uses "the machine" as a running metaphor for government. His essay is, of course, a meditation on the correct course of action to take in a democratic...
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Civil Disobedience
While Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay his poll tax, not because he objected to paying taxes, per se, but because he did not want to financially support his state of Massachusetts....
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Civil Disobedience
The tone of the second paragraph of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience might best be described as ironic, mocking, derisive, and sardonic, with an occasional touch of idealism. Thoreau makes...
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Civil Disobedience
In this quotation from "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau questions the benefit of the "majority rule" system of government and asks whether or not the human conscience can be the barometer by which we...
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Civil Disobedience
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau says that "[g]overnment is at best but an expedient" to make the point the systems of government are only present as a convenience and not as a true body by which...
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Civil Disobedience
"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau was written to explain why Thoreau had refused to pay his taxes and gone to jail. Thoreau's decision to disobey the United States government was grounded...
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Civil Disobedience
In Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," Gandhi's "On the Eve of Historic Dandi March," and Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, identifying with other people is the way to bring about social reform. There...
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Civil Disobedience
This answer is completely dependent on the individual reader. Some readers are absolutely going to agree with every word that Thoreau puts forth in "Civil Disobedience," but other readers are...
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Civil Disobedience
The quick answer to this is that Thoreau says the only obligation he has the right to assume is the obligation to follow his own conscience. Here is a quote that shows that. The only obligation...
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Civil Disobedience
This quote from Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” succinctly summarizes one of the key sentiments negotiated in the text. In the essay, Thoreau argues against governmental overreach and...
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Civil Disobedience
In this masterful essay, Thoreau elaborates on his decision to refuse to pay taxes to support a war in Mexico that he saw as unjust and completely wrong. This essay therefore explores the nature of...
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Civil Disobedience
In “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau argues that majority rule is not a moral form of government. He says that majority rule is not any more likely to bring about justice than another form...
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Civil Disobedience
These words from Resistance to Civil Goverment are reinforcement of the words of Thomas Jefferson, who declared, "That government is best which governs least." In a free society, if men accept...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau seems to believe that slavery will never be eradicated through the democratic process, at least not in the foreseeable future: There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men....
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Civil Disobedience
In the beginning portion of "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau criticizes the nature of the government and how it serves to rob citizens of their voice rather than to offer them a true democratic...
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Civil Disobedience
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau clearly states his disdain for the "majority rule" system. Thoreau argues that the majority rule does not accurately represent the voice of the people because in...
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Civil Disobedience
This quote comes in the 4th paragraph of “Civil Disobedience:” After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau says that soldiers are on the same level as wood, earth, and stones because they blindly do what the government tells them to do. When they do that (rather than paying attention to their...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau feels that the rich have essentially sold themselves to whatever it is that has made them rich. Their wealth, and their materialist desire to retain that wealth and everything it buys,...
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Civil Disobedience
“Diction” refers to the author’s choice of words and manner of speaking. Remember too, that Thoreau first delivered an early version of what we now call “Civil Disobedience” as a public lecture to...
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Civil Disobedience
It shows that he considered spending a night in jail for standing up for his beliefs to be just one of his various activities that week. It wasn’t special or particularly life-changing. He was...
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Civil Disobedience
In his essay Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau appeals to the logic of his audience as he argues that since laws are man-made, they are not infallible; further, he contends that there is a...
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Civil Disobedience
An Abolitionist, Henry David Thoreau was a true man of principle because he acted upon his beliefs. For, he refused to pay a poll tax in his state because the monies gathered from this tax went...
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Civil Disobedience
After he spends his night in jail, it seems as if Thoreau really sees himself as superior to the other people in the society (and to the society itself). Basically, he seems to be saying that...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau concludes that prison is the only place for free and honorable men if they are living in a slave state. He argues that it is necessary for these men of honor to stand up against the...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau, himself, will not provide much in way of counter- arguments to his points in Civil Disobedience. Instead, I think that you might have to consider the consequences of Thoreau's claims and...
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Civil Disobedience
According to Thoreau, the government can hinder the people when it governs too much. He says, "That government is best which governs not at all." He uses the Mexican-American War as an example of...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau begins his essay by establishing his definition of what a government is, then examining what basis a government has for exerting authority or power, and finally proposing what he considers...
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Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau doesn't explicitly combat racism in "Civil Disobedience" but does condemn slavery and the inaction of people against it. His essay also had a major impact in combating racism:...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau believed that conscience should be what decides right and wrong, not majority rule. In an essay that he wrote while in jail, famously known as "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau writes, Can...
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Civil Disobedience
Having written "Resistance to Civil Government" in response to questions about why he had gone to jail rather than pay a Massachusetts poll tax, Henry David Thoreau proposes the argument that laws...
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Civil Disobedience
First titled "Resistance to Civil Government," Henri David Thoreau' "Civil Disobedience" states that the American government is "but a tradition...endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau says that men serve the state with their bodies, their minds, and/or with their consciences. In the first category, he includes soldiers, "the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,...
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Civil Disobedience
The histories of most countries include episodes many of their citizens might prefer to forget. In the United States, the practice of slavery and institutionalization of racism is an example of a...
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Civil Disobedience
To me, Thoreau's action in allowing himself to be let out of prison is somewhat hypocritical. I think that he does become just like the people he criticizes. Thoreau argued that people who paid...
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Civil Disobedience
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau is essentially arguing that when a person's conscience is in conflict with the law, that person is bound to obey their conscience. Laws in Thoreau's America were...
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Civil Disobedience
In "Resistance to Civil Government, Thoreau argues that the standing army, which is "an arm of the standing government," is the vehicle of government abuse. Thoreau asks his reader to Witness the...
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Civil Disobedience
I think that there can be much in way of similarity between both text's assertion of the role of individual towards government. Antigone's fundamental premise is that she cannot abide by an unjust...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau believed individuals should fight unjust laws. In his essay, he characterizes those who mindlessly obey the laws as "machines": The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but...
