A Recommended Read
2011-12-24 at 12:58 pm
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I’ve been using the Kindle app to read ebooks on my computer lately. It’s pretty handy. It lets you dim the page a bit so you don’t burn your eyeballs out so badly when you’re reading a lot on a computer monitor. It also lets you switch things around where you can read white text on a black background too.
I just finished reading On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. It can be found at Manybooks.net in ebook format for free. Manybooks indexes Project Gutenberg’s free ebooks into an easily searchable database. They’ve got some good stuff.
Thoreau’s On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience was kind of eye opening for me. I was surprised by his libertarianly tinged socialist outlook on things. In this writing, he promotes the idea of protesting needless wars by not paying taxes. He even describes his experience of being jailed for refusing to pay taxes. But then he also mentions that he always pays the highway tax because he realizes it is justified and see’s it as his cooperative duty toward his fellow man.
It was interesting to see a snapshot from a time in American history when slavery was still a debatable subject. I’m sure our descendants will one day get the same eerie feeling that I felt, when they read back on our blogs discussing climate change, evolution, and the right to health care. That’s assuming any of them give a damn about what we had to say about things. It’s probably just as likely that we’ll all be written off as morons from a shameful time in American history.
It was interesting to see Thoreau bitching about many of the same problems that we face today with government bureaucrats and their endless hunger for bribes. It’s scary to think that we’ll probably never fully escape greedy politicians.
Below are a few interesting quotes that I bookmarked along the way:
“Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
“Confuscius said: If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are subjects of shame.”
“If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies, and so a man.
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8 Responses to “A Recommended Read”
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Thanks. Especially for letting me know about the free online copy.
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moosehammer Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
They’ve got a ton of old classics on manybooks. Walden, Moby Dick, a ton of H.P. Lovecraft, stuff by Abraham Lincoln, Sherlock Holmes, The Communist Manifesto, Ayn Rand, you name it!
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I appreciate this post, & find it right up your rebellious alley.
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My favorite quotes by Henry Thoreau…….
“The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.” -- Henry David Thoreau
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” -- Henry David Thoreau
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.” -- Henry David Thoreau
“There is no remedy but to love more.” -- Henry David Thoreau
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -- Henry David Thoreau
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” -- Henry David Thoreau
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Hyper-Intellect Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 11:45 am
Have added these to my extensive quote collection. Thank you.
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FREEBIRD Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
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Used to take a hike every year and bring along a battered copy of Walden. It is funny how traditions aren’t done one year and then they are set aside.
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