Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 51 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
Buy Now for £13.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is a political treatise against slavery, war, and an argument that individuals not cede excessive power to government.
A masterpiece of American individualism, the essay is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of political and philosophical writings ever produced by an American.
Thoreau wrote the essay because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. When the government engages in actions that are unjust, he believed that citizens should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if it results in imprisonment or violence.
People who said they have been influenced by Civil Disobedience include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, suffragist Alice Paul, and authors Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and William Butler Yeats.