On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
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On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Unabridged: 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/31/2022


Synopsis

Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is a political treatise against slavery, war, and an argument that individuals not cede excessive power to government.A masterpiece of American individualism, the essay is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of political and philosophical writings ever produced by an American.Thoreau wrote the essay because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican–American War. When the government engages in actions that are unjust, he believed that citizens should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if it results in imprisonment or violence.People who said they have been influenced by Civil Disobedience include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, suffragist Alice Paul, and authors Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and William Butler Yeats.

About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), an essayist, poet, philosopher, and anti-slavery activist, was one of the most beloved figures in American literature. He was the author of dozens of books and essays, including On Civil Disobedience, The Maine Woods, and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

About Edoardo Ballerini

Edoardo Ballerini is an American writer, director, film producer and actor.  He has won many awards for his audiobook narration; within only a few years after beginning his narrating career, he won several AudioFile Earphones Awards for his work, including Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller and Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.   He narrated Kenzaburo Oe’s Nobel Prize Winning Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Joseph Finder’s The Moscow Club as well as works by John Edward and Daniel Stashower.   In television and film, he is best known for his role in The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush and Romeo Must Die. The silky-voiced Ballerini is trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Greg on December 26, 2007

The tale of a man who dared to live in his parents backyard and eat dinner with them, and then lived to write about it. Compelling.......more

Goodreads review by Mario the lone bookwolf on December 06, 2019

Finding freedom from consumerism and opportunism in harmony with nature. The principle of living in harmony with nature has been a topic for a long time until civilization alienated people from their original homeland. However, especially this opens up the possibility for introspection and reflection......more

Goodreads review by James on June 24, 2007

I often credit this book with my philosophical awakening. Thoreau presents a criticism of modern life, technology, economy, and wasteful culture from the perspective of one who has simplified his life and experienced something much closer to real independence than any other modern man. Some have cri......more

Goodreads review by Roy on July 30, 2017

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! This month, two hundred years ago, Henry David Thoreau made his way into the world. Thus it seemed like a good time to revisit his thorny classic, which filled me with such contradictory feelings the first time around. This......more

Goodreads review by David on April 28, 2017

Henry David Thoreau is best known as an American writer and transcendentalist who wanted first-hand to experience intuitively and understand profoundly the rapport between man and nature. In a sense Thoreau is Adam after the Fall living East of Eden as a bachelor in a humble cabin built beside Walde......more


Quotes

“Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and…one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced…He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay [On the Duty of Civil Disobedience] has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.” Mohandas K. Gandhi, lawyer, ethicist, and activist for Indian self-rule

“[In] Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience…I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement