Henry David Thoreau Quotes

When you know how to use it, disobedience can be a virtue.

Thus 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. I will breathe after my own fashion.

I will not dance to your war drum!

Civil disobedience is the core of American defiance against kings and emperors.

His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.

The only true resistance to this Government... [is] to cease to co-operate with it.

When [Ralph Waldo] Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, 'What are you doing in there?' it was reported that Thoreau replied, 'What are you doing out there?'

Lighting that torch in Atlanta didn't make me nervous. Standing up to the government - that made me nervous.

DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

Dissociate yourselves from the satanic administration, and you will bring it to its knees. You will not have to lift a finger, let alone a stick or stone.

A little rebellion is a good thing.

One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.

Only I keep wishing I could think of a way...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.

Bill said, "She is mine." I wondered if my hands would move. They would. I raised both of them, making an unmistakable one-fingered gesture. Eric laughed, and Bill said "Sookie!" in shocked admonishment. "I think that Sookie is telling us she belongs to herself," Eric said softly.

At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.

Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too.

I believe in civil disobedience among other forms of resistance in times when it's called for.

Let every fart count as a peal of thunder for liberty. Let every fart remind the nation of how much it has let pass out of its control. It is a small gesture, but one that can be very effective - especially in a large crowd. So fart, and if you must, fart often. But always fart without apology. Fart for freedom, fart for liberty - and fart proudly.

Call it peace or call it treason / call it love or call it reason / but I ain't marching anymore

Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government.

Civil disobedience can never be in general terms, such as for independence.

The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.

The anarch wages his own wars, even when marching in rank and file

If we had to kneel in order to live in peace, [ U.S. government] will have to kill us before.