"I could not undertake to form a..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions.”

“We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.”

“The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.”

“Time and again, researchers have shown that students' capabilities are powerfully impacted by the identities they develop for themselves as the result of teachers' belief in their level of intelligence.”

“If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.”

“Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.”

“The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.”

“That great Cathedral space which was childhood.”

“We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.”