Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.

I am inclined to believe that a man may be free to do anything he pleases if only he will accept responsibility for whatever he does.

Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me.

No man is free who is not master of himself... Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose?

Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.

Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.

Freedom requires responsibility to choose who we are above and beyond our immediate impulses, needs, and social pressures, so that we can genuinely express the type of person we want to be, live the life we truly want to live, leave the legacy we desire.

I am a good, strong word giver; I am a jealous guard of my own secrets. Freedom is the rule; I am hungry for one good thing I can do.

The way I look at it, I'd rather make my own mistakes than have people make them for me.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. They are the same thing.

Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

The rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom.

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to well, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to do.

The question is whether personal freedom is worth the terrible effort, the never-lifted burden and risks of self-reliance?

When one has genuinely chosen a course for oneself it cannot be possible to hold another responsible for it.

I'd much rather have the freedom, and the obligation to use it responsibly, than be put in a box.

Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends.

To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.