John Leland argued that "hipness" did not exist in literature until the works of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman came about. He stated, "In a country without a literature, the major writers outlined a break from both the literary shadow of Europe and the political shadow of their own country: a gospel of nonconformity in prose and verse." Their impressive break away from the traditional literature of Europe coincided with their arguments of the individual needing to break away from society. Thoreau illustrated this concept in his work “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” through a “minority” that is “powerless while it conforms to the majority.” He advocates for the idea of subverting the status quo; he states, "Let your life be counter friction to stop the machine." Although one person may seem insignificant in comparison to a large unanimous group, he or she cannot simply follow; to live an honest life and be an independent person, one must fight and refrain from accepting traditional ideas without first questioning them. Thoreau wrote in his work Walden, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in the common hours,” which he learned from living a nontraditional life himself. This "unexpected success" comes about when one lives as an individual and discovers his or her true identity from living an honest life as an independent person.