The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government.
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This American government, – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.
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All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions …
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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. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
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Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them …? Men generally under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. … it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.
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If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth, – certainly the machine will wear out. … but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
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I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. … any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.
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Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; … the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced.
That government is best which governs not at all.
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“Resistance to Civil Government” (“Civil Disobedience”)
an essay by Henry David Thoreau
first published in 1849.
