One idea of Henry David Thoreau that was adopted by twentieth-century leaders of great social change movements was his concept of civil disobedience. Thoreau believed that individuals had a moral duty to resist unjust laws and government actions through nonviolent means. This idea greatly influenced leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, who used civil disobedience as a central strategy in India's struggle for independence from British colonial rule. It also influenced civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr., who famously employed the tactic of nonviolent resistance during the American civil rights movement. Both Gandhi and King acknowledged Thoreau's influence on their respective movements and considered him to be a significant philosophical inspiration.
