Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Democracy

• If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Motivational, Religious, Freedom

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Savio 1

• That government is best which governs least.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Ralph Waldo Emerson 29; O'Sullivan 1; Shipley 1

• A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Doors, Democracy

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

• 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.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Blood, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

• Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rights, Democracy

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.211, Graphic Arts Books

• After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hands, Majority Rule

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.286, Simon and Schuster

• I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fashion, Power, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Civil Disobedience: Resistance to Civil Government”, p.26, The Floating Press

• The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Government, Democracy, Progress

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.88, Penguin

• The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not sendmen to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Brother, Men, Iron

• But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Majority Rule, Justice

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.2, Cambridge University Press

• Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Angel, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.718, Modern Library

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