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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majo...rity; 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put... into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sa...le there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax un...der written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of "Uncle Sam" the full amount of both Principal and Interest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the highest gifts are not measurable in dollars and cents. Beyond and above the class who run an account with the world and me...rely manage honestly to pay in kind for what they receive, there is a noble army--the Shakespeares and Miltons, the Newtons, Galileos and Darwins,--Watts, Morse, Howe, Lincoln, Garrison, John Brown--a part of the world's roll of honor--whose price of board and keep dwindles into nothingness when compared with what the world owes them; men who have taken of the world's bread and paid for it in immortal thoughts, invaluable inventions, new facilities, heroic deeds of loving self-sacrifice; men who dignify the world for their having lived in it and to whom the world will ever bow in grateful worship as its heroes and benefactors. It may not be ours to stamp our genius in enduring characters--but we can give what we are at its best.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to susp...ect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And anyone is free to condemn me to death If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence.... I shall will to the common stock of air my breath And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw... and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with,--the dollar is innocent,--but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »