“ Civil Disobedience“: “Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?. Wherever in the world individuals and groups embrace human rights over political rights, they invoke the name of Henry David Thoreau and the words of his essay. It is perhaps the many “lives” of Thoreau, both individually and collectively, that beckon such a diversity of people to his writings.Īs a social reformer whose words echo the principles on which the United States was founded - that it is a person’s duty to resist injustice where it is found - Thoreau’s writings influenced Gandhi’s work in India, Tolstoy’s philosophy in Russia, and King’s civil rights stand in the United States. These are just some of the terms by which the work of Henry David Thoreau can be categorized. Social reformer - Naturalist - Philosopher - Transcendentalist - Scientist. His contemporaries and sometimes-neighbors included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He said he was born 0n July 12, 1817, “in the nick of time” in Concord, Massachusetts, during the flowering of America when the transcendental movement was taking root and when the anti-slavery movement was rapidly gaining momentum. Henry David Thoreau lived in the mid-nineteenth century during turbulent times in America. The Thoreau Log: A Digital Documentary Life of Henry D.News from The Walden Woods Project Farm.The Transcendentalists: Their Lives & Writings.

David thoreau