Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

You don't need money to be free. You can just say if you don't need stuff, you're always free.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Disdain the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free.

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

I'm happy without money.

Inconvenience yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel.

I just want to be self-sustainable so that I can continue to just do what I like to do and not make a million dollars. Nobody needs a million dollars.

Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.

My material life is simple.

Me, I don't need money.

I live a very simple life.

Stay small and control it yourself.

I've been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence.

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself.

To protect our independence, we'll never run ads.

I've always been pretty self-sufficient. I never had to borrow money from my mum, even in the early days.

I do quite well for myself, but I live a simple life.

I pay for my own things, and that's how I've always been since I was 15.

I'm fine with just a simple life.

He is always a slave who cannot live on little.

The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils." Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.