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Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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Walden or, Life in the Woods

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Henry David Thoreau

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“The Puritans are conventionally considered more "moderate" than the Pilgrims. This is like calling al-Qaeda more moderate than ISIS. The Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were no less mad... They forbade Church of England clergy from setting foot in their new American theocracy in Boston and Salem, hung Quakers, and passed a law to hang any Catholic priests who might dare show up.”

“The Cambridge flowers had a moral meaning...but they had a poetical meaning that was even more apparent. So did the sounds one heard on summer evenings, the bells of the cows ambling home at twilight, the lullaby of the crickets in early autumn, the hymns of the frogs, in spring, in some neighbouring swamp, not to speak of the creaking of the winter wood-sleds, dragging their loads of walnut over the complaining snow. Every sound and odour had its value.”

“It's no devil,' I said. 'And why do you say that?' she asked again, as if we hadn't discussed this before. 'Because,' I said, 'the Devil has more important things to do if he exists at all, and on the point of his existence at all I am not certain.' 'Where did you get an idea there was no Devil?' 'Rousseau,' I said. 'His philosophy argues that the worst evil is in man.”

“Why would you show hostility toward a country that offers you hospitality? Why fight for a country you don’t want to live in while staying in another that has welcomed you? Why cause trouble or commit crimes while waving the flag of a country you’ve chosen to leave, especially while benefiting from the hospitality of another? If you’re unhappy, why not peacefully return to the country you support so strongly?”

“When they are stealing from us and enjoying the money they stole from us. They want to be as far away as they can be from us. When they are caught. They want to be so close to us as they can be. They want us to fight for them. They are not reminding us that they are one of our own.”