Thoreau Disobedience Quotes & Sayings

I won't bite."
"Are you sure?" My voice was rough.
"I won't bite right now," he said with a ghost of a smile.
The soft expression bemused me enough so that the gentle patting lured me to the recliner. Logan wrapped strong arms around me and pulled me into his lap.
My butt fit him like we were interlocking puzzle pieces. — Mary Hughes

Voting for the right is doing nothing for it. — Henry David Thoreau

We need to become good citizens in the global village, instead of competing. What are we competing for - to drive more cars, eat more steaks? That will destroy the world. — Yuan T. Lee

I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. — Patrick Henry

King became the movement's voice and launched a new phase of mass protest.
He was a disciple of the teachings of Gandhi and Thoreau, as well as of Jesus. He
emphasized nonviolent civil disobedience. The civil rights struggle was not against
whites, but against injustice; its most important weapons were not anger and hate
but love and forgiveness, King declared.
65
On — Anthony R. Fellow

Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. — Henry David Thoreau

Life struck us as being a strangely volatile thing. It was exactly as though life were a salt lake from which most of the water had suddenly evaporated, leaving such a heavy concentration of salt that our bodies floated buoyantly upon its surface. — Yukio Mishima

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "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. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. — Henry David Thoreau

The problem with emotion was that it was clearly something important, but-at least according to the old philosophy-it was something to overcome. — Donald Norman

If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man. — Henry David Thoreau

I remember being told of a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Read. You can always talk with another reader. — Rorke Denver

This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope.
p.124 — Curtis White

Another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations-projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves-and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits. — Parker J. Palmer

There are reasons, increasing in number and quality, to believe that the masses of ordinary galaxies may have been underestimated by a factor of 10 or more. — Jeremiah P. Ostriker

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. — Henry David Thoreau

There exists a powerful energizing force in the spiritual life principle. All energy began with the Creator, who infused it not only in all natural processes, but also into that higher form of nature called human nature. The more closely, then, that a person identifies with the Creator, the more surely that person will experience within his or her own nature the process of re-creation which operates in all creation. — Norman Vincent Peale

I was terrible at desk jobs. — David Chang

The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference. — Aristotle.

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. — Marvin Ammori

Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away. — Steve Krug

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. 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

If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. — Henry David Thoreau

No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. — Henry David Thoreau

In his mind, that's what made a man a man, that he protected those he cared about. Those he loved. — Regina Scott