Thoreau on Smart Gadget Setup

The Ancient Advice

“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Walden, Economy (1854)

Who Said It

Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862) was an American essayist, naturalist, and surveyor from Concord, Massachusetts. He worked for a time in his family's pencil business, then spent two years living in a small cabin he built beside Walden Pond, on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote about the experiment in Walden. A man who tested how little a good life requires is well worth hearing out about your thermostat.

What It Meant Then

The line comes from the opening chapter of Walden, titled "Economy," where Thoreau examines what people give up in exchange for their possessions. He was writing for neighbors who worked long hours to afford houses, farms, and finer furnishings. His argument was that the things we acquire to serve us can quietly reverse the arrangement, so that we spend our days maintaining what was supposed to make life easier. He meant it as an accounting problem: count the hours each object costs.