"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty...." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.”

“The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.”

“I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.”

“Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.”

“I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”