I am reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience currently. Walden was interesting enough, to a point; I have never heard of a person leaving civil life and going out to live in the middle of nowhere before. However, I was a bit disillusioned by the fact that Thoreau began a fire in the woods and could not be bothered to clear away the brush around the fire, and thus started a great forest fire, which he barely apologized for. Besides that, some of his ideas are rather odd. I thought to myself, “What decent things can such a person have to say about government?” I was particularly unexcited about reading Civil Disobedience.
However, beginning on the first page of said essay, I found several bits and pieces of Thoreau’s writing that we would do well to think on- here are a few.
“Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that it has accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”
“Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are made daily made agents of injustice.”
“I heartily accept this motto- ‘That government is best which governs least’.”
“This American government, --what is it but a tradition, though a very recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.” (A bit prophetic, don’t you think?)
“A very few, as heroes patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, men, serve the state with their consciences also, and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”
“But when friction comes to have its machine [that is, its government], and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.”
“There are thousands who are in opinion against slavery and war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say they do not know what to do, and do nothing... they hesitate, they regret, and sometimes, they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect.”
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!”
“How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and to enjoy it?
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
“A minority is powerless while is conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” (Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world… You are not of the world even as I am not of the world… be a light unto the world…)
“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak, who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or heroism it may inspire.”
“If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.” (I think we saw this phenomenon last weekend- that is, of eloquent speakers on the house floor getting other representatives by their “wordy wit” to vote one way, while the enraged people watched on their television sets, their complains ineffectual. So what follows? Presumably, America loses her rank. To whom? China? Russia? Yikes. Scary thought!)
No comments:
Post a Comment