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Freedom Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

53 Freedom quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All Freedom quotes Henry David Thoreau’s page

Thoreau imagines freedom as something wild and natural, not just polite rules. He says true liberty springs from disobedience, while obeying makes people slaves. He also points out that a state must honor the individual’s power, otherwise people spend their lives chasing a shaky kind of freedom.

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“Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

Henry David Thoreau

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All good things are wild and free.

Henry David Thoreau

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The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

Henry David Thoreau

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“Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.”

Henry David Thoreau

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I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start…

Henry David Thoreau

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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…

Henry David Thoreau

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The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.

Henry David Thoreau

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It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you…

Henry David Thoreau

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“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.

Henry David Thoreau

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“My life more civil is and free Than any civil polity Ye princes, keep your realms And circumscribed power Not wide as…

Henry David Thoreau

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The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we…

Henry David Thoreau

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The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor…

Henry David Thoreau

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There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of…

Henry David Thoreau

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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…

Henry David Thoreau

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With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly…

Henry David Thoreau

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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…

Henry David Thoreau

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The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; evenafter…

Henry David Thoreau

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No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is…

Henry David Thoreau

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“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable…

Henry David Thoreau

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Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but…

Henry David Thoreau

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“Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.…

Henry David Thoreau

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Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It…

Henry David Thoreau

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“We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of…

Henry David Thoreau

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“he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day.…

Henry David Thoreau

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America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be…

Henry David Thoreau

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“Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves…

Henry David Thoreau

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“At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the…

Henry David Thoreau

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Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Henry David Thoreau

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“No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession.”

Henry David Thoreau

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It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were…

Henry David Thoreau

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While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

Henry David Thoreau

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Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part…

Henry David Thoreau

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I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be…

Henry David Thoreau

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What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?

Henry David Thoreau

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There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and…

Henry David Thoreau

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We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance…

Henry David Thoreau

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To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom…

Henry David Thoreau

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If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am…

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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau

“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that…

Henry David Thoreau

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Henry David Thoreau

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and…

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“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of…

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As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may…

Henry David Thoreau

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Henry David Thoreau

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the…

Henry David Thoreau

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

Henry David Thoreau

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

Henry David Thoreau

The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no…

Henry David Thoreau

“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to…

Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life

Henry David Thoreau