Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!

The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.

the fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.

Let her tell stories and dance in the rain, somersault, tumble and run, her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep, let her grow like a weed in the sun.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.

I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

I worry very much about kids growing up in a society where they think: "I'm not going to talk about this issue, read this book or explore this idea because someone may think I'm a terrorist." That's not the kind of free society I want for our children.

There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for the crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have.

From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things.

It's fun to be loose. Just like on stage, all of your great ideas come from looseness.

Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth.

I'm an American who loves an America which doesn't exist, which is a land of freedom and free ideas.

I'd had a belly-full of being subservient. I had to find something else to do, and I did. I went to the animation houses. I went to new fields.

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality. Freedom of speech, freedom of religious thought, and the right to due process for composers, performers and retailers are imperiled if the PMRC and the major labels consummate this nasty bargain.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights... stands as a landmark achievement in the history of human liberty.

...[T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

I'm not militant about anything. If there's cheesecake in the house, I'll have some. If I'm in the mood for something, I'll have it. I don't obsess about anything. I could have three or four "cheat days" in a week and then not have dessert for another three months.

In societies like the American and West European where the dynamics of energy come from freedom and where the climate and the whole ethos are those of freedom, censorship is bound to be at worst, stupid; at best, futile; and always, to some degree, inconsonant with the character of the society as a whole.

I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

A man has a right to think lots of things he has no right to say.

The flag is a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty.

There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn't get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call 'em "chitt'lin'" nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That's what you were -- a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters.

We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.

Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.