If a man does not keep peace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears,
however measured or far away.
The
essay Civil Disobedience (1849) grew out of his overnight stay in
prison as a result of his refusal to pay a
tax supporting the
Mexican War. This story is told in the play
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail. This concept of resistance was later used by
Mahatma Ghandi in
India to throw off British rule and later by
Martin Luther King in his
Civil Rights protests.
Less commonly known, Thoreau was also a naturalist emphasizing the
dynamic ecology of the natural world.