Following up on yesterday’s post, here are 28 quotes from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. This is a quick read, and you can find free PDF’s online, or buy a $1 copy (pictured) by clicking here.

I had originally Tweeted this list, back in early October.

1. “That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

2. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

3. Governments show thus how successfully man can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.

4. I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.

5. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

6. Law never made men a whit more just.

7. The mass of men serve the state this, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

8. Most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.

9. How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

10. All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or ins inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all day that such is not the case now.

11. I quarrel not with far off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.

12. What is the price current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect.

13. All voting is a sort of gaming… a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.

14. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.

15. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

16. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations [than the eradication of wrong] I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

17. Some are petitioning the state to dissolve the union… why do they not dissolve it themselves… and refuse to pay their quote into its treasury?

18. Action from principle… divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

19. It is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.

20. If [a legal remedy] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

21. [The governments] very Constitution is the evil.

22. It is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel – and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government.

23. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.

24. If a thousand men were not to lay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would to be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

25. If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned his office, than the revolution is accomplished.

26. If I deny the authority of the state when it presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. It makes it impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably

27. I… do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society I have not joined.

28. I was not born to be forced.

Do you have other favorite quotes from this work? What other books would you suggest?

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