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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's
Life & Writings
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Henry D. Thoreau Quotation Pages
On Freedom
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It is hard to have a
Southern overseer ; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of
all when you are yourself the slave-driver. [Journal,
1845-47]
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Do we call this the land
of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and
continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal,
and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a
means to moral freedom? [Journal, 16 February 1851]
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Men talk of freedom! How
many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from
prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect
slaves. [Journal, 6 May 1858]
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The mass of men are very
easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel,
and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein. [Journal,
28 November 1860]
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What we want is not
mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts
with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few
individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the
State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow
much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but
men. [Journal, 18 June 1854]
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As I preferred some
things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard
and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich
carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the
Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no
interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when
acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are “industrious,” and
appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them
out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those
who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I
might advise to work twice as hard as they do,–work till they pay for
themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the
occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially
as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The
laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free
to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but
his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from
one end of the year to the other.
In short, I am convinced,
both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth
is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as
the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more
artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the
sweat of his brow, unless he sweats more easier than I do. [Walden,
"Economy"]
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What great interval
is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave
of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a
Unitarian minister of? [Journal, 28 February 1857]
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Talk about slavery!
It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men
are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere
thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and
conscience. Indeed this slavery is more complete than that which
enslaves the body alone. It exists in the Northern States, and I am
reminded by what I find in the newspapers that it exists in Canada. I
never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this
kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice . He
fetches a slightly higher price than the black man only because he is a
more valuable slave. [Journal, 4 December 1860]
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The question is
whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men,
whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves
them for their own good. [Journal, 1 September 1853]
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We
have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen
in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we
must fight for them. [Journal, 16 June 1854]
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from The Writings of Henry
David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906)
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Report
errors to the
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