"It behooves every man to see that..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.”
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
“While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
More on Justice
“Yea, death and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean. To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free.”
“Men should continue to fight, but they should fight for things worth while, not for imaginary geographical lines, racial prejudices and private greed draped in the color's of patriotism.”
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”
More on Responsibility
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . .”
“Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it.”
“To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.”