"Instead of noblemen, let us have noble..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.”

“The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice.”

“I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside.”

“It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.”

“It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.”

“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.”

“Men come together in cities in order to live: they remain together in order to live the good life”

“All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by.”

“I feed the branches of the people.”