Henry David Thoreau Quotes

A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

I think it's a scary thing for a lot of people to think of the government not being involved in their lives, particularly single women.

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior.

In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns.

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.

I think to each its own, if nobody is hurting anybody-who cares? Everyone should be able to do what they want and be happy. Who you love is who you love. That's the way I see it

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

We’re not so free that we don’t have to listen to rules, and laws, and regulations. Those are important. But the spirit, the freedom of the spirit, that’s what I think of American Dream, that we are free here to do what we want to do, what we set out to do.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value.

I wrote about why I didn't think libertarians are really doing this kind of thing so that they can have sex with dogs. I discussed some of the reasons that a person might want to live out of the control of our federal, state, local, and every other form of government. Actually, I don't think I even called myself a libertarian. I think Tom Shroder identified me as one.

I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.

I have no notions of a perfect society, I don’t know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we’ve got, I’m no utopian, I’m not a humanist that would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony: I know that if we don’t live that way, we’ll kill each other and destroy the Earth.

A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.

I think people should be allowed to do what they want to do. I think that it doesn't make sense for a certain class to be able to get married and be treated differently when others are not. But I don't equate polygamy with same-sex marriages - and I know you don't either. Polygamy is a different story because it has different class differentiations in it.

Tell the politicians and the hustlers: live and let live.

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other; for envy creates the beginning of strife.

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions.

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.

The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones, or played in theaters. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art.

Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so.

The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

As we maintain the vigil of peace, we must remember that justice is a vigil, too - a vigil we must keep in our own streets and schools and among the lives of all our people - so that those who died here on their native soil shall not have died in vain.

The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...