Beth > Beth's Quotes

“If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.”
― Tacitus

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Journal #14

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I 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. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.”
― 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 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 prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obli­gation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“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.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

“Under a goverment which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself”
― Pearl S. Buck, Fighting Angel

“To be awake is to be alive.”
― Henry David Thoreau