Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Violence

• Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Blood, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

• Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Writing, Simple

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.389, Penguin

• They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Slavery, Violence, Violent

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.250, Graphic Arts Books

• There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds; the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly filial.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Parent, India, Use

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.99, Xist Publishing

• The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hate, Love Is, Violence

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.114, Penguin

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