Also see Breaking the law

Henry David Thoreau laid the groundwork for the modern theory of civil disobedience in his 1849 essay, “Resistance to Civil Government.” Thoreau believed, simply, that a person’s conscience was a higher authority than the government. He espoused the “right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.” Writing during a time of slavery, he recognized that what is right is not always the same as what is lawful. “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law,” he wrote, “so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

Though Thoreau did not coin the term civil disobedience, his essay was a landmark. Gandhi said its “incisive logic is unanswerable.” Martin Luther King Jr. said of Thoreau that “no other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea [of non-cooperation with evil] across than Henry David Thoreau… . As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.”

Since Thoreau’s time, civil disobedience has been used as a primary form of nonviolent resistance in countless situations and countries. At minimum, it sends a clear message that protesters mean business. In a more extreme form, it becomes almost like a game of moral chicken, in which authorities are forced to show how much force they are willing to use to suppress non-violent citizen expression. Displays of force against largely innocent citizens can undermine the moral authority of a government and shift societal power dynamics and even the course of history. – Staff