Henry David Thoreau Quotations: GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
What institutions of man can survive a morning experience?—Journal, 24 May 1851
What is it [to] be born free and equal, and not to live?—Journal, 16 February 1851
What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of lichens and leaves. There is a certain perfection in accidents which we never consciously attain.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?—Journal, 16 February 1851
What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.—Journal, 9 June 1854
What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.—"Slavery in Massachusetts"
What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable,—I mean for us lucky white men, —is the fact that there is so much less government with us.—"A Yankee in Canada"
What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds,—if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool.—Journal, 26 October 1853
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
When we are shocked at vice we express a lingering sympathy with it. Dry rot, rust, and mildew shock no man, for none is subject to them.—Journal, 22 June 1840
