Henry David Thoreau - Government Quotes

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Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?

Henry David Thoreau
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Henry David Thoreau
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. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; 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. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Henry David Thoreau
The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

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

Henry David Thoreau
I have a room all to myself; it is nature. It is a place beyond the jurisdiction of human governments. There is a prairie beyond your laws. Nature is a prairie for outlaws.

Henry David Thoreau
Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

Henry David Thoreau