I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians.
Weitere Zitate von Henry David Thoreau
Zum Autor"Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading."
"The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity."
"I think that there is nothing not even crime more opposed to poetry to philosophy ay to life itself than this incessant business."
"What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?"
"I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement."
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."