Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Politics
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Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.
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The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
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As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
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Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.
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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
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Politics is but a narrow field.
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The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.
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Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.
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Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
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Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
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The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.
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An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
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We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.At any meeting of politicianshow impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution!
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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
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I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidatesas the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.
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Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.
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In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.
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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. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
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How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
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What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.
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What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
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There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.
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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?
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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