Life Without Principle

"Life Without Principle" is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that gives his program for right livelihood.

Themes

# Don’t cheat people by conspiring with them to protect their comfort zones.
# Don’t make religions and other such institutions the sort of intellectual comfort zone that prevents you from entertaining ideas that aren’t to be found there.
# Don’t cheat yourself by working primarily for a paycheck. If what you do with your life free-of-charge is so worthless to you that you’d be convinced to do something else in exchange for a little money or fame, you need better hobbies.
# Furthermore, don’t hire someone who’s only in it for the money.
# Sustain yourself by the life you live, not by exchanging your life for money and living off that.
# It is a shame to be living off an inheritance, charity, a government pension, or to gamble your way to prosperity — either through a lottery or by such means as prospecting for gold.
# Remember that what is valuable about a thing is not the same as how much money it will fetch on the market.
# Don’t waste conversation and attention on the superficial trivialities and gossip of the daily news, but attend to things of more import: “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”
# Similarly, politics is something that ought to be a minor and discreet part of life, not the grotesque public sport it has become.
# Don’t mistake the march of commerce for progress and civilization — especially when that commerce amounts to driving slaves to produce the articles of vice like alcohol and tobacco. There’s no shortage of gold, of tobacco, of alcohol, but there is a short supply of “a high and earnest purpose”.

On-line sources

* "" at Wikisource
* " [http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=principle Life Without Principle] " at "The Picket Line"

Printed sources

* "My Thoughts are Murder to the State" by Henry David Thoreau (ISBN 978-1434804266)
* "The Higher Law: Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform" (ISBN 978-0691118765)
* "Collected Essays and Poems" by Henry David Thoreau (ISBN 978-1-88301195-6)