Henry Thoreau

“Any fool can make a rule and any fool will mind it.” Henry David Thoreau

During the time that Henry David Thoreau wrote his novels was a time when everyone wanted to be a leader and anyone would listen. These people were called transcendentalists. Transcendentalism was an idealistic, philosophical and social movement developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Mostly it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity. Henry David Thoreau was on of these central figures. In this quote I feel that he was speaking about what was happening to the people of New England. Everyone wanted to be a leader and everyone was making laws in which lower class citizens followed because they could do nothing else. I think that Thoreau wanted people to think about things in life and realize the rules they were making and why you followed it. When Thoreau went to Walden Pond he got away from the world, culture, rules and regulations.