Henry David Thoreau Quotations: News, Newspapers, & The Press
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.—Thoreau to Parker Pillsbury, 10 April 1861
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region.—"Life without Principle"
The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.—"Life without Principle"
The newspapers are the ruling power. What Congress does is an after-clap.—
Journal, 17 November 1850
The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.—Walden
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.—WaldenÂ
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate . . . As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.—Walden
What have we to do with petty rumbling news? We have our own great affairs.—Thoreau to Lidian Emerson, 20 June 1843
What news! How much more important to know what that is which was never old!—Walden
