Friday Filosophy v.12.03.2021

Friday Filosophy v.12.03.2021

Henry David Thoreau. July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayistpoet, and philosopher. Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism.

Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo TolstoyMahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes referred to as an anarchist. In “Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau wrote: “I heartily accept the motto,—’That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, ‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. … I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”

  • Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
  • It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
  • Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
  • The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
  • Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
  • If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
  • Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
  • Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
  • Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
  • Things do not change; we change.

The Time is Now

 

 

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