"Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.”
“The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.”
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see - i.e. compare it to, something worse or better, that determines whether you are respectively grateful and happy or ungrateful and bitter.”
More on Truth
“Try to remain truthful. The power of truth never declines. Force and violence may be effective in the short term, but in the long run it's truth that prevails.”
“The truth is lived before it is understood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way... Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.”
“Truths may clash without contradicting each other.”