Quotes to inspire and reflect

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desirean exact interpretation of the future, which inthe course of human things must resemble ifit does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

[ Reply to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s questioning whyThoreau had gone to jail in 1843 for not paying the Massachusetts poll tax as a protest against slavery :] Why are you not here also?

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparingto say is, that in Wildness is the preservation ofthe World.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of beingregarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if the town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

We preserve the so-called peace of acommunity by deeds of petty violence everyday. Look at the policeman’s billy and handcuffs!Look at the jail! Look at the gallows!

I hear many condemn these men because theywere so few. When were the good and the braveever in a majority?

[ Of wood stumps :] They warmed me twice—once while I was splitting them, and again whenthey were on the fire.

Don’t spend your time in drilling soldiers, whomay turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplify, simplify.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. . . . We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation isconfirmed desperation.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding theuniversal favor with which the New Testamentis outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitalityshown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular.

The fate of the country . . . does not dependon what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money?

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at onceeffectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until theyconstitute a majority of one, before they sufferthe right to prevail through them. I think thatit is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighborsconstitutes a majority of one already.

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know notof such ways. They take too much time, and aman’s life will be gone. I have other affairs toattend to. I came into this world, not chiefly tomake this a good place to live in, but to live init, be it good or bad.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let itgo: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injusticehas a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or acrank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will notbe worse than the evil; but if it is of such anature that it requires you to be the agent ofinjustice to another, then, I say, break the law.Let your life be a counter-friction to stop themachine.

I think that we should be men first, andsubjects afterwards. It is not desirable tocultivate a respect for the law, so much as forthe right. The only obligation which I havea right to assume is to do at any time what Ithink right.

The mass of men serve the state thus, notas men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and themilitia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc.In most cases there is no free exercise whateverof the judgement or of the moral sense; butthey put themselves on a level with wood andearth and stones; and wooden men can perhapsbe manufactured that will serve the purposeas well.

The objections which have been broughtagainst a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

I heartily accept the motto, “That governmentis best which governs least”; and I shouldlike to see it acted up to more rapidly andsystematically. Carried out, it finally amounts tothis, which also I believe,—” That governmentis best which governs not at all”; and whenmen are prepared for it, that will be the kind ofgovernment which they will have.

Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, theentire race may migrate from the earth, tosettle some vacant and more western planet. . . . It took but little art, a simple applicationof natural laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail ofmatting, to people the isles of the Pacific, anda little more will people the shining isles ofspace.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

The TV business . . . is normally perceived assome kind of cruel and shallow money trenchthrough the heart of the journalism industry, along plastic hallway where thieves and pimpsrun free and good men die like dogs, for nogood reason.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone . . . but they’ve always worked for me.

It is Nixon himself who represents thatdark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of “reporting” based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism—and the best journalists have always known this.

We were somewhere around Barstow on theedge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Viewed from the distance of the moon, theastonishing thing about the earth . . . is that it is alive. . . . Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is therising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. . . . It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full ofinformation, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

I read somewhere of a shepherd who, whenasked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t!These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,

And I must enter again the round

O may my heart’s truth

And there could I marvel my birthday

And I rose

A child’s

But for the lovers, their arms

When All My Five and Country Senses See.

In my lifetime all the problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions havecome from the English-speaking nations across the world.

I see the boys of summer in their ruin

[ Of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev :] We can do business together.

The President of the Commission, Mr. Delors, said at a press conference the other day thathe wanted the European Parliament to be thedemocratic body of the Community, he wantedthe Commission to be the Executive and hewanted the Council of Ministers to be theSenate. No. No. No.

We know we can do it—we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor.

[ Of the Irish Republican Army bombing inBrighton intended to assassinate her :] This was the day I was meant not to see.