Civil Disobedience

Read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" again tonight. Haven't read it in a couple of years, pick it up now and then. What a great essay.

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them... They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man."

"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."

"[T]he rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich."

"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight."

Ah. You have to love that. Completely.