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Civil Disobedience
In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau argues that the only government humans are obligated to obey is one that behaves in a moral and ethical manner—a government that does what is right, not merely what...
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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...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau stopped paying his taxes to protest slavery and also spoke out against the Mexican-American War, which he believed was part of a Southern plot to expand slavery. After he criticized the...
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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
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
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
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
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
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
In this paragraph, Thoreau describes hearing about a political party convention to select that party's next presidential candidate, but he suggests that it really does not matter who is selected by...
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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
The famous essay "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau argues that people should think for themselves and obey the dictates of their consciences even if in doing so they are forced to disobey...
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Civil Disobedience
There are a number of paradoxes in Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." The essay starts off with a shocking paradox as Thoreau states: "That government is best which governs least." This...
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Civil Disobedience
During the American Revolution, colonists who were loyal to the king and Britain were known as loyalists. They were also called Tories, King’s Men, or Royalists. Although experts do not know the...
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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
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
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau says that the mass of men serve the state "not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." These are men such as the army, the police, jailers, and others...
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Civil Disobedience
To be able to answer this question, it's important to understand what justice means. If you look the word up online, though, you'll find that the word has several primary and secondary meanings,...
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Civil Disobedience
Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience to justify not paying his taxes, for which he was put in jail. He refused to pay his taxes to protest two injustices he believed were perpetrated by the United...
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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...
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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...
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Civil Disobedience
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau distinguishes among different types of taxes because he believes that the purpose of some taxes justify payment while the purpose of others does not. For example,...
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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
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
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
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
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
At the start of this essay, Thoreau argues that the war with Mexico proves that the government of the US can be perverted by a relatively few people. To me, he is saying that the war is made...
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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
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
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
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....
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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
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 step toward effective protest to bring about governmental change according to Henry David Thoreau is to identify and communicate the nature of the problem and the desired outcome. He...
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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...
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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
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
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
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...
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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
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
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...
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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
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 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...
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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
When Henry David Thoreau chose to go to jail rather than pay a poll tax for the war in Mexico, Bronson Alcott called Thoreau a good example of “dignified noncompliance with the injunction of civil...
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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...
