Which two 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.