Henry David Thoreau on Civil disobedience

“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.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison […] the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”

“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.”