"Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most
practical
man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practise in
himself.
... He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering
humanity.
His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is
written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable." - Mohandas
Gandhi
"... when, in the mid-1950's, the United
States
Information Service included as a standard book in all their libraries
around the world a textbook ... which reprinted Thoreau's 'Civil
Disobedience,'
the late Senator Joseph
McCarthy succeeded in having that book removed from the shelves —
specifically
because of the Thoreau essay." - Walter Harding, in The Variorum
Civil
Disobedience
"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a
moral
obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more
eloquent
and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As
a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a
legacy
of creative protest." - Martin
Luther King, Jr, Autobiography
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