"I was not born to be forced...." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
More by Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.”
“We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.”
“Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.”
More on Freedom
“For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks." Thus I became a madman.”
“to tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country”
“Even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.”
More on Individuality
“I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who I am, this is what I do, I say what's on my mind.”
“We don’t just live in a celebrity take-down culture; we live in a take-down culture. People will find anything about you and twist it to where it’s weird or wrong or annoying or strange or bad. You have to live your life not only in spite of people who don’t understand you - you have to have more fun than they do.”
“Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”