“Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

—  Henry David Thoreau, book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

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Henry David Thoreau385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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