| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 61181 |
| QUOTATION: | The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself in the land than a clamshell. But the farmer is armed with plow and spade. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. “Walking” (1862), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 5, pp. 230-231, Houghton Mifflin (1906). |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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