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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor
did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I
wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able
to give a true account of it in my next excursion. ”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden 'Thoreau was a great writer,
philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught
nothing he was not prepared to practise in himself. … He went to gaol
for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has,
therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all
time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.' Mohandas Gandhi
'I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral
obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more
eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David
Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the
heirs of a legacy of creative protest.' Martin Luther King, Jr Henry
David Thoreau (1817-62) was an American author, intellectual and
political dissident most famous for his works Walden and Civil
Disobedience. An active abolitionist and naturalist, Thoreau is best
remembered for his theory of civil disobedience, which foregrounded the
work of figures such as Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
