Which sentences in this excerpt from "civil disobedience" by henry david thoreau support the transcendentalist idea that the individual is more important than government or society?
this american government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? it has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. it is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves…
but a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? - in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? why has every man a conscience, then? i think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, 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. it is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.