Three Ideas of Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was a teacher turned writer who was born in 1817 and
raised in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1842, he moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
where he lived for two years. Thoreau became Emerson’s close friend and devoted
disciple. When Thoreau decided not to go back to teaching, and refused to pursue another
career, he dedicated himself to testing the Transcendentalist philosophy through
experience. Three ideas that Thoreau had in his life were: the government that governs
least governs best, march to the beat of your own drum, and the man who has a lot isn’t
really free because he becomes tied down to his possessions. They are what I will be
writing about in the following paragraphs.
One of Thoreau’s ideas was that the government that governs least governs best.
This concerns us today because our government basically tries to dictate e...