Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. Often the poor man is not cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Ticknor and Fields, 1854, p. 80.
This kind of ethical and moral commitment to others who are need distinguished Kasich from most Republicans of his time.
Normally, this would not be a particularly noteworthy quotation. However, at the time the Republican Party had shifted far to the right–more so than at any other time since its inception. The primary election he was in brought out the most right wing members of the party, which was for gutting the social safety net, did not see health care as a right, and even wanted to terminate Obamacare and Social Security as it existed. Yet when asked in a nationwide TV interview, what the government should do for the poor and destitute who could not afford health care or other necessities. His courageous answer and position doomed his bid for the presidential nomination.
Mitchell was the first African American to be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat. The few other Blacks were Republicans from the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. The President was FDR and Mitchell was elected in the midst of the Great Depression.
Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
