" I meet this American government, or its representative the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer; that is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with, —for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel,—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. "

― Henry David Thoreau , Civil Disobedience and Other Essays