Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It's easier to swoon in pious dreams Than do good actions.

Ethical is 'I'll wait and do what's right even in the hardest times and even if I have to give up gains to do it.'

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

What we want is a moral revolution, not one that people associate with street riots and the disorganization of life. A transformation of attitudes that will introduce normal, moral order in the functioning of the state. An order whereby honesty is a positive value, and dishonesty a negative one.

If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.

In the absence of their superior's adherence to the law, honorable men either speak up or get out

Men of most renowned virtue have by transgressing most truly kept the law.

Basic moral values must therefore first be internalized in the hearts and minds of its people before we can hope to enforce legislation reflecting these values

Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of reflection.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

If you will express the requisite purity of character in action, you cannot do it better than through the spinning wheel.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

When a person tries to act in accordance with his conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might. There's one thing, however, that will never lead anywhere, and that is speculating that such behavior will lead somewhere.

Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.

When there's a right and wrong thing to do, choose right regardless of what your friends do.

Tis well when we dare not do a thing we think is not good and fair; but not so well when we think a thing not good and fair because we dare not do it.

Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to be successful but become well-adjusted to an unjust status quo as opposed to being great & being maladjusted to an unjust status quo.

I can only say that I have acted upon my best convictions, without selfishness or malice, and that by the help of God I shall continue to do so.

We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure.

What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

It is better to have a sore than a seared conscience.

It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.