Historic Humanist Series

Thoreau was a classical rebel against the established orders of society and government. He built a small cabin at Walden Pond, two miles from Concord, Massachusetts, and moved into it on July 4, 1845. During his more than two years of living in solitude, he wrote two major works and composed hundreds of pages of his personal journal.

He vowed not to support a government that permitted slavery and was forced to spend time in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax. When his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson asked him what he was doing in there, Thoreau responded, What you are doing out there? Thoreau is an inspiration for those supporting the principles of humanism.

--Flo Wineriter