Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison, the only house in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions… — 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 wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“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
