June 12 will be the 204th birthday of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau.
It is perhaps quite fitting to acknowledge Thoreau, author of 1849's Civil Disobedience, at a time when people in many places are protesting, with most practicing the kind of non-violent disobedience Thoreau advanced. Thoreau's ideas about peaceful defiance directly influenced later leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thoreau advocated non-compliance with unjust laws and non-payment of taxation when those taxes supported institutions he felt were unjust, like slavery and war. He was briefly jailed by tax collectors in 1846. He later retreated in seclusion to the wilderness for several years. In 1854, he chronicled his seclusion in his most famous work, Walden.
Thoreau suffered from tuberculosis for over 25 years before passing at the age just 44 in 1862.
