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Henry Thoreau (12 Jul 1817 - 6 May 1862) American writer, naturalist, philosopher and poet who is best known for his study of nature, while retired to live in a hut beside Walden Pond at Concord (4 Jul 1845-6 Sep 1847). Thereafter, he wrote two books: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). Short biography of Henry Thoreau >>

Henry Thoreau
“Dews of fresh and living truth”

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“Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are … rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.”

— Henry Thoreau

In Yankee in Canada (1863)

More Henry Thoreau quotes on science >>

Henry Thoreau’s essay, “Life Without Principle,” originated as a lecture titled “What Shall it Profit.” delivered at Railroad Hall in Province, Rhode Island (6 Dec 1854), four more times in Massachusetts in 1855, plus once in New Jersey in 1856.

Before he died, Thoreau edited his lecture for publication, and when it appeared posthumously in the Atlantic Monthly of Oct 1863, it was entitled “Life Without Principle,” by which we now know it. The essay was then included in a collection published under the title of A Yankee in Canada (1866).

The essay has been described by Walter Harding as “pure Transcendentalism, a plea that each follow his own inner light.”1 The subject quote is part of a stream of ideas, with no further development of the reference to science, as can be seen in a short passage in which it appears:

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. … Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity!

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Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

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