Walden and Civil Disobedience

By Henry David Thoreau

Words from the achiever

“The one book, probably, of my young adolescence would have been Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. That struck a very deep chord with me. Thoreau is very independent-minded, very iconoclastic and had quite a corrosive sense of humor. He reminded me of my own father, in fact. I think that I probably have grown up to have a Thoreauvian perspective on many things. Though, in other ways, I live a life he would not have approved of. He believed one should simplify, simplify, simplify. Make your life very clear and plain and meditative and not confused.”

About the book

The classic account of Thoreau’s solitary stay in a cabin the woods by Walden Pond. This volume also contains Thoreau’s famous essay on nonviolent resistance, which inspired Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.