"Even voting for the right is doing..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
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. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.”
“If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.”
“A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!”
More on Activism
“Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy.”
“My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.”
“I wouldn't advise [people] to be silent.”
More on Government
“The only true resistance to this Government... [is] to cease to co-operate with it.”
“I don't think either one of them knows what it's all about, to be honest with you. Both sides are doing nothing but just looking towards the next election.”
“The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed anequal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.”