The answer is "It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves…" And “I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. “Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience defends the need to set up one's conscience over the precepts of authority. It blames American social institutions and approaches, most apparently slavery and the Mexican-American War.
