# Quote — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

> How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle — the perception and the performance of right — changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

- Author: [Henry David Thoreau](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau.md)
- Book: [Civil Disobedience](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau/civil-disobedience.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)#Civil_Disobedience_(1849)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau/civil-disobedience/how-can-a-man

## More from this book

> If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau/civil-disobedience/if-a-man.md)

Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md)

> The lawyer's truth is not truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau/civil-disobedience/the-lawyers-truth.md)

Topics: [truth](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth.md)

> The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to — for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well — is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-david-thoreau/civil-disobedience/the-authority-of-government.md)

Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md)