I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain long in the mould of the other, but makes its own bed, and pushes itself away the shortest and surest way, by its own strength, and rises as a tree, and does not wait to decay and manure the ground for new acorns, if it be an oak, but grows its own way, and spreads its leaves to the sun, and draws its sustenance from the same earth, and lives.
— Henry David Thoreau
Modern
Civil disobedience, Walden
