Civil Disobedience

Thoreau believes that the best kind of government is one that governs not at all. Governments, like all human institutions, are, of their very nature, corrupt. Though governments are established on...

In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau draws upon his transcendentalist philosophy in order to justify non-violent resistance to the government. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau believes that one must...

Rhetorical questions are questions that have only one right answer. The following is a classic example of a rhetorical question: "Is the pope Catholic?" This question is not meant to get people...

Tone in literature is the attitude or feelings a writer expresses towards the subject at hand. Tone is expressed primarily through word choice. For example, when Thoreau opens his essay with the...

"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...

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...

I would like to agree with Thoreau in terms of the idea that we ought not to support practices that are legal if they go against our conscience and personal sense of what is right, and, conversely,...

To Henry David Thoreau, people can best improve the government by being the best, moral people that they can be. He believes that people are most often restrained from bettering society through...

Thoreau takes issue with the practice of majority rule because, so very often, the majority does not do what is just or right. He believes that the individual must decide what is right and wrong...

Thoreau did not think very highly of voting in general or individuals who expressed their opinions by casting votes. He thought that voting was too much like gambling: risky and uncertain. He...

I would argue that the thesis statement to "Civil Disobedience" can be found in a paragraph near the middle of the essay: If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of...

In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau asserts the right of an individual to follow his or her conscience to do what he or she feels is right, even though the state may not agree with him or her. In this...

One problem with every individual following their own conscience is that consciences can be wrong. While we are told "let your conscience be your guide," almost all religious groups understand that...

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 is an essay about Thoreau’s ideas about the government and his recounting of the time he spent in jail for not paying his taxes. After his release from jail, a friend paid his...

Thoreau wastes no time getting to his feelings about government in Civil Disobedience: I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least.'" Thoreau writes that the scope...

Thoreau is arguing that "honest" citizens of Massachusetts who wish to oppose slavery should do so by refusing to pay taxes. The "face" of the government is the tax collector, and the test here is...

In his famous essay "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau argues that people are accountable to their consciences first and their governments afterwards. According to Thoreau, the best forms of...

Ultimately, Thoreau believes that sheer weight of numbers does not sanctify the will of the majority. In other words, just because a majority of people believe something, that doesn't necessarily...

This quote needs to be understood within the context of the overall essay. "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau extols individuality and disparages government. Thoreau...

Thoreau feels that majority rule is incompatible with the rule of indvidual conscience. He writes: the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are...

Additionally: Thoreau was dismayed and frustrated by the inability of the antislavery movement of his day to engender and enforce policy. In paragraph 10, he writes: “There are thousands who are in...

To take the opposing view, Thoreau may have been released after someone paid the fine. For, in his passage, Thoreau writes When I came out of prison--for someone interfered, and paid the tax....

Thoreau differentiates among different types of taxes because he feels differently about them based on their purposes. He says that he pays the highway tax "because I am as desirous of being a good...

Thoreau found his brief imprisonment interesting for a number of reasons. First, he discovered that the jail was quite a clean and civilized place. He describes his cell, which was whitewashed once...

The tone of this paragraph is earnest. Thoreau speaks to his audience as a concerned friend, as someone who has lived and seen and realized and now wants to impart the knowledge he's acquired for...

Thoreau's argument begins with the assertion that "that government is best that governs not at all." He sees government in opposition to individual action; it turns people into "machines"...

During his writing of "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau's biggest criticisms of government policy were of the institution of slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). He believed...

In paragraph 40 of "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau is at pains to stress that, contrary to the impression he may have given, he is not a trouble-maker. He doesn't wish to quarrel with any man or...

This quote can be considered as a two-pronged assertion, which working together are beneficial to a nation’s citizenry. The first part of this quote, "Let every man make known what kind of...

In his letter from a Birmingham jail after he was arrested during the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King takes his final words directly from Thoreau: I submit that an individual who breaks...

To be able to answer this question, let's first look at a definition of "expedient." According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word "expedient," when used as a noun, means "something done or...

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...

Thoreau compares the government to a machine to explain how governments dehumanize individuals. Thoreau claims that the "mass of men" serve the state as machines "with their bodies"; they "put...

In the conflict between majority rule and the individual conscience, Thoreau is firmly on the side of the latter. Thoreau is skeptical of government in general, believing such institutions tend to...

Henry Thoreau, who went to prison when he did not pay his taxes in protest of the Mexican War, concluded that it was the American people, not the government, that kept the U.S. free. He wrote about...

"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau is one of the most famous essays ever written on a person's duty to follow their conscience rather than blindly follow the government in matters that...

Henry David Thoreau’s audience in “Civil Disobedience” is the American public. He wrote this essay in 1847, while Black people were still enslaved on plantations in the American South, and his...

Thoreau argues that the "mass of men serve the state . . . not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." It is as though these men who serve in the standing army, the militia, or as...

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....

One of the more general ways Thoreau describes as a function of serving the state is when the public (individuals and/or society as a whole) goes along with a governing body and does not affect its...

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...

In the first paragraph, Thoreau refers to the government as a "tool" of the people. It is the means through which the will of the people is done. Although Thoreau does not use this image, we might...

In his famous essay "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau does not so much argue that conscience should play a role in government but rather that people of conscience will more often find...

As a Transcendentalist, Henry Thoreau believed in the power of the individual, and that people hold their own “higher laws” in their hearts and minds and souls, independent of any man-made...

In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau claims that we have a moral obligation to refuse to obey unjust laws. Further, we have a responsibility to not contribute in any way to immoral institutions, such...