“Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“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… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image