However with different motives; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau were both admirable men that strived for a better government. As respected spokesmen they served as rebels against what they thought to be bad one's stopping at nothing. Not even jail.
Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. were both brilliant men. Thoreau's "Civil Obedience" and Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" are perfect examples of their intellect. Looking at these documents and observing the tactics they use while attempting to move their audience toward their ultimate goal, one can see the finesse that both men possessed.
Thoreau and Dr. King lived during two different centuries. So being that they were vocalist and activist on the current issues it's almost certain that they would have a different motive. Even though their motive was 'poles apart', differing in many ways, both Thoreau and Dr. King wrote with the aspiration of obtaining a new form of government presumably resembling the republican one we exercise today.
1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Henry David Thore...
English: Portrait by Benjamin D. Maxham (daguerreo...
Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern. Deutsch: ...Although awfully controversial, to do so both men felt nonverbal actions such as breaking the laws was the only effective way. In spite of the fact that it's relatively ironic, they viewed going to jail in order to make a mockery of an immoral or impractical laws put in place by the government was "the very highest respect for law (King para. 5)."Henry David Thoreau motive for rebelling against the government was to make it more of a democratic one. He had no respect for the way it was being ran. His proclaimed problem basically summed up to be that he felt the government was being ran like a monarchy, or in other words by a selective few and not an entire society as it should. It simply wasn't up to par according...