United States

Henry David Thoreau

1817–1862

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, Thoreau spent two years in a cabin he built at Walden Pond and died at forty-four, probably of tuberculosis. Walden and Civil Disobedience argue for simplicity, solitude, nature and the primacy of conscience over an unjust state. His thought shaped American environmentalism, political philosophy and movements of nonviolent resistance.