Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond was keyed to his notion of eliminating all the elements of life that interfered with thought, observation, and exploration, so that he could attempt to see what was at the root of life. For him, the experiment was a success. Thoreau's Walden has since inspired many people, particularly a wave of "cultural drop-outs" from the 1960's and 1970's in the United States, to attempt to follow his example and to go forth into the woods. For a few, the experiment grew into a life of comfortable simplicity. For some, the experiment provided an interval of learning, somewhat in the fashion of Thoreau's experiment. For the many who thought Walden a bible rather than an account of an experiment, however, life in the woods proved as pointless, contentious, and shallow as similarly misguided drug-addled experiments in communal living and, indeed, as the empty culture the experimenters were attempting to escape.
One may honestly ask if Thoreau were truly the originator of the concept, as Quaker "witnesses" had practiced passive disobedience for some generations before. However, Thoreau's Civil Disobedience provided the philosophical rationale for non-violent disobedience, just as his single night in Concord's jail provided the example of symbolic civil disobedience. Thoreau's tract inspired Mohandus K. Gandhi, who utilized massive, organized civil disobedience in India's struggle for independence from Britain. The tactic, though not the philosophy, was utilized variously in the American labor movement; the tactic and the philosophy being adopted by black Pullman Porters leader A. P. Randolph. Pacifists and war resisters took up Thoreau's philosophy, and black Philadelphia Quaker and pacifist Bayard Rustin, along with Randolph and others, brought the philosophy and tactic to the American Civil Rights Movement. In the Civil Rights Movement, and generally, peaceful resistance is associated most strongly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and figure of towering importance in the Movement. With the possible exception of Gandhi, King stands as history's most effective adherent and utilizer of the philosophy of non-violent resistance.
Thoreau's note regarding the poor sales of his A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself."
As Thoreau was dying, a neighbor took it on himself to ask, "Henry, have you made your peace with God?"
Thoreau, according to accounts, mustered a smile and gently replied, "I wasn't aware that we had ever quarreled."