-
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...
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
This question is actually a personal one, and therefore gives you a lot of freedom in crafting your response. “Civil Disobedience” is a very opinionated work, so it won’t be too difficult for...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
Thoreau made his stand against the American government – through his nonpayment of the poll tax to Massachusetts – in order to protest two issues. The first was that the country still allowed...
-
Civil Disobedience
In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau writes about his overnight jail experience in paragraphs 25-34. He talks about the idea of freedom immediately, in paragraph 25: I could...
-
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,...
-
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...
-
Reference
Both are concepts based on essays written by two Transcendentalists in the 1840s—“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in 1841; and “Civil Disobedience,” then called...
-
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...
-
Literature
As a Transcendentalist, Henry Thoreau believed in the power of the individual; and that everyone has an internal “higher law” that successfully guides them through life. In the fourth paragraph...
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
Through this essay, originally titled “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau explained his individual non-violent tax protest that resulted in him spending one night in the county jail. Here...
-
Civil Disobedience
In the fourteenth paragraph of his essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,...
-
Literature
We find Thoreau’s three categories of service outlined in paragraph 5 of “Civil Disobedience.” He is brutally honest with his opinions of all three. Military and law enforcement officials, at...
-
Civil Disobedience
From his essay, Civil Disobedience, it appears that Thoreau is most concerned with government preserving the liberty of its citizens rather than increasing material equality between its citizens....
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
This phrase appears in the 16th paragraph of the essay: Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we...
-
Civil Disobedience
This reference comes right away, in the first paragraph of Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience.” The full sentence reads: Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are...
-
Literature
Henry Thoreau was arrested and put in the Middlesex County jail. Someone arrived at the sheriff’s door during the night and paid the bill. It had probably been his Aunt Maria Thoreau, who lived...
-
Civil Disobedience
According to Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience," the government robs society of its ethics and individuality. Thoreau says that the system of government that we in America have created and employed...
-
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....
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Henry David Thoreau
I see three persuasive techniques employed in this essay. The first is Thoreau’s method of making this piece a personal plea. He uses “I” a lot. He tells us what he thinks, prompting us to...
-
Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were Transcendentalists, which already made them nonconformists in the eyes of many New Englanders in the 1840s-1850s. A nonconformist is someone who...
-
Social Sciences
The quote that you are asking about comes from Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. The main thrust of the quote is the idea that government should not intervene in the lives of its...
-
Civil Disobedience
One of the most significant points that Thoreau makes in "Civil Disobedience" is that individuals have to respect a transcendent notion of the good that might supersede temporal laws. One of the...
-
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....
-
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...
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
The original question had to be edited. I would say that part of the optimism embedded in each of the works lies in the authors' respective beliefs in social justice. Consider this in the title...
-
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...
-
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,...
-
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....
-
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...
-
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....
-
Civil Disobedience
The original question had to be edited down. I think that Thoreau is able to use his power of appeal without being pedantic because he is imploring individuals to be their own authority. Thoreau...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Civil Disobedience
One of Emerson's fundamental claims is the idea that the individual must listen to their own voice and respond to it. Silencing it in the name of the conformist social order is something that...
-
Civil Disobedience
I think that Thoreau approaches his essay in a fundamentally Romantic manner. One such way that this is evident is in his stress on individuality and individualism throughout the essay. For...
-
Civil Disobedience
I think that Thoreau's significance in this quote is to stress the idea that human beings should resist conformity in as many ways as possible. For Thoreau, when individuals succumb to conformity...
-
Civil Disobedience
Thoreau's essay may be even more relevant today than it was in his time as his opening statement points to the intrusion of big government. For instance, Thoreau felt that the war with Mexico...
-
Civil Disobedience
To this day, Henry David Thoreau's theme of the inalienable right of the individual to answer to a higher power by following moral law over civil law remains a powerful and influential piece of...
-
Civil Disobedience
Thoreau's central argument in Civil Disobedience is that when the laws of the state conflict with a higher moral law, it is the moral responsibility of the individual to obey the higher law. This...
-
Civil Disobedience
Given where Thoreau is in his essay, his greatest objection would be to governmental policy where issues of conscience are directly addressed. For example, I think that Thoreau would stand firmly...
-
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...