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This is companion post to the guide to knowing our governments.

The great H.D. Thoreau is famous as an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. However he was often critical of governments and wrote about improving the nature of governments. His essay Civil Disobedience is a must read.

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

Did you know Mahatma Gandhi was greatly inspired by Thoreau’s thought?

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
- Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)

1. 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.

2. Let every man made known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

3. Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

4. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

5. Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

6. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

7. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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