3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

I don’t want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live.

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Let us not, my friends, be wheedled and cheated into good behavior to earn the salt of our eternal porridge, whoever they are that attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not purchase any clearing here, trusting that richer bottoms will soon be put up. It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere than this.

It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.