"He who rides and keeps the beaten..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“In my walks I would fain return to my senses.”

“A fact may blossom into a truth.”

“No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.”

“Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.”

“[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

“To go nowhere, follow the crowd.”

“Without your knowledge, the eyes and ears of many will see and watch you, as they have done already.”

“I will always remember my delight when Mrs. Georgia Gilmore - an unlettered woman of unusual intelligence - told how an operator demanded that she get off the bus after paying her fare and board it again by the back door, and then drove away before she could get there. She turned to Judge Carter and said: "When they count the money, they do not know Negro money from white money.”

“If you walk into a forest - you hear all kinds of subtle sounds - but underneath there is an all pervasive silence.”