From one piece Pond Scum (The New Yorker, published online as “The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau”) 7 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Basing beliefs on personal intuition and revelation substitutes anecdote and authority for evidence and reasonTheir words
And that is the second problem with basing one’s beliefs on personal intuition and direct revelation: it justifies the substitution of anecdote and authority for evidence and reason.
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Rejecting every certainty but one's own is zealotry, and issuing contradictory decrees on whim is despotismTheir words
To reject all certainties but one’s own is the behavior of a zealot; to issue contradictory decrees based on private whim is that of a despot.
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Democracy exists to settle conflicting claims of conscience by means other than decree or forceTheir words
It is the point of democracy to adjudicate among such conflicting claims through some means other than fiat or force, but Thoreau was not interested in that process.
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Following one's conscience is no safe theory of governance, because private moral compasses err and disagreeTheir words
People routinely perpetrate wrongs out of obedience to their conscience, even in situations when the law mandates better behavior. (Consider the Kentucky county clerk currently refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.) Like public institutions, private moral compasses can err, and different ones frequently point in different directions.
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Their words
Only those with no sense of balance must live in so much fear of the slippery slope.
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Their words
But “Walden” is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.
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Their words
This vision cannot survive any serious reading of “Walden.”