Question

Write why you are either in support of, or in opposition to this statement "That government is best which governs not at all." - Thoreau

Answer 1

The quotation is incomplete. In full it reads:

"I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html

The qualification is important, because Thoreau was not proposing that government be abolished promptly -- he was not an anarchist -- but that the goal of men ought to be to be able to dispense with government eventually. That is, that we should strive to so govern ourselves that it no longer becomes necessary to rely on someone else to govern us.