As for adopting the ways which the state has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. |
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. |
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. |
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. |
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. |
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. |
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. |
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. |
Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. |
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. |
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. |
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. |
To be awake is to be alive. |
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? |
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. |
That government is best which governs least. |
I heartily accept the motto, that government is best which governs least ... Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, that government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. |
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. |
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. |
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. |
