Walden and Civil Disobedience

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." That quintessential American--rebel, philosopher, farmer, and, perhaps most profoundly, robust liver of life--Henry David Thoreau continues to inspire us to live in accordance with nature as well as our intellect, to improve our neighbors by bettering ourselves, to seek truth above all things, and to accept nothing handed down by a government, or any system, before questioning it first.