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Civil Disobedience, By Henry David Thoreau

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” (“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”). Thoreau lived his whole life trying to figure out what really matters to humanity. His personality was quite different than others. He was into individualism and he separated himself from society to live on his own and focus on becoming self-reliant.Thoreau’s seperation from society resulted in him being seperated from society and not needing anyone's help. Learning to live and succeed by himself without influences from people was his goal. He believed in the importance of oneself and the government took that away. Henry David Thoreau, an American poet and novelist used his life experiences and thoughts to emphasize nature, …show more content…

”Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves”(Historical and recent examples of civil disobedience). Obedient people consistently listen to others, and because of this they never acknowledge their own opinion and beliefs of themselves. Henry David Thoreau did not swear by society and how others follow each one’s footsteps. Instead, Thoreau requested to be himself and be unique, and not like others.When you listen to what humans say or what they believe in, and do the same thing, you will never know your own self. Thoreau argued about the government needing to end earning taxes from the citizens. He believed the poll tax was to support the Mexican-American war and to expand slavery. Because of the beliefs he had, he refused to pay for a aspect he did not believe in. When Henry later found out someone paid his taxes to let him out of jail, he seemed quite mad about the issue. This problem later inspired Thoreau to write his essay “Civil Disobedience”. Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience was where there are less people running the government, the better it is. Because of the hassle of Thoreau getting arrested, his essay was an inspiration to many people. Some of them were Martin Luther King Junior, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma

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