See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help ...put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;Msee if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The President has the authority to do a great deal in promoting a reform of the civil service. But the great mass of evils to be d...ealt with require means, time agents, the work of intelligent and able officers, none of which the President has unless they are furnished by Congress. As at present situated, the great evil is congressional patronage. This I have resisted as a usurpation of executive prerogatives, until now few Congressmen assert openly their claim to it. But they withhold from the Executive the means to get information from other sources than through Congressmen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is obvious that the French Revolution was a vaster and more profound social upheaval, involving more violent conflict between c...lasses, more radical reorganization of government and society, more far-reaching redefinition of marriage, property, and civil law as well as of organs of public authority, more redistribution of wealth and income, more fears on the part of the rich and more demands from the poor, more sensational repercussions in other countries, more crises of counterrevolution, war, and invasion, and more drastic or emergency measures, as in the Reign of Terror. From very early in the French Revolution the American Revo lution came to seem very moderate. Thomas Jefferson, who was then in France, feared that the French were going to dangerous extremes as early as June 1789.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not wish to believe that the courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to a...ny court in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the courts of justice, so called,--to the Supreme Court of the land,--and, as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. Such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick- lock and murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that their responsibility ends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be... accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is my contention that civil disobedients are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite... in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law... into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in A...sia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with hu...man rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »