Henry David Thoreau Quotations: GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.—Walden
One sensible act will be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.—Journal, 26 June 1852
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom.—"Life without Principle"
Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society—full of grit and gravel and two political parties are its two opposite halves which grind on each other.—Journal, 10 November 1851
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.—Journal, 4 December 1860
Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any cast.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
That certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least often reminded of the government.—Journal, 21 August 1851
The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.—"Life Without Principle"
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order, who observe the law when the government breaks it.—"Resistance to Civil Government"
The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist."—"A Walk to Wachusett"
