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"Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ..."
"D'autres, comme la plupart des législateurs, des politiciens, des juristes, des ministres et des fonctionnaires, servent surtout l'État avec leur intellect et, comme ils font rarement des distinctions morales, il arrive que sans le vouloir, ils servent le Démon aussi bien que Dieu. Une élite, les héros, les patriotes, les martyrs, les réformateurs au sens noble du terme, et des hommes, mettent aussi leur conscience au service de l'État et en viennent forcément, pour la plupart, à lui résister."
 By: | Henry David Thoreau (more quotes by Henry David Thoreau or books by/about Henry David Thoreau) |
| (1817-1862) American author, poet, philosopher, polymath, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and transcendentalist |
Source: | A Duty of Civil Disobedience [1849], available at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html; La Désobéissance civile, translated by Micheline Flak (Montréal: La Presse, 1973), p. 60 |
Categories: | Conscience, Dissent, God, Morality, Protest, Resistance, Statism |
Rating: |    |