"There have been some nations who could..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.”

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

“I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .”

“Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.”

“Your goal as a leader isn't to be indispensable to the people you lead; it is to leave your people something that is indispensable to them.”

“We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.”

“I see little more important to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.”

“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”

“Listen to some good poetry. You see? It keeps us from thinking we are only what our blatant appetites describe us as.”