Move · Famous walkers

Famous walkers: the people who walked to think

By StackSpan Editors

You don’t need special gear, a training plan, or a race to enter. For about 2,400 years, some of the sharpest minds in history did their thinking the plain way: they got up, went out the door, and walked. Here are a few of them, what they actually said (we checked), and a simple way to start your own habit, beginning small. Jump to the walking ladder.

The Greeks: a school named after a walkway

Aristotle’s followers were called the Peripatetics, from the Greek for “walking around.” The popular story says Aristotle lectured while pacing. That story comes from Diogenes Laërtius, writing about 500 years later, who says Aristotle chose “a public walk in the Lyceum where he would walk up and down discussing philosophy with his pupils” (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 5.2). Honest footnote: Diogenes offers a second explanation as well, and many scholars think the name more likely came from the peripatos itself, the covered walkway at the Lyceum where the school met. Either way, the school was named for a place to walk.

Plato gives us a fun twist. His dialogue Phaedrus opens with Phaedrus heading “to take a walk outside the wall” after a long morning sitting indoors. Socrates tags along, then admits he hardly ever leaves town: “the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country” (free text). Even Socrates had to be talked into a walk.

Thomas Jefferson: walk far, and don’t even think

Jefferson wrote long letters of advice to young relatives, and walking comes up again and again. To his nephew Peter Carr in 1785 he went against this whole page: “The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.” (Founders Online)

A year later, writing to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., he made the point every beginner needs to hear: “No one knows, till he tries, how easily a habit of walking is acquired.” (Founders Online)

Ben Franklin: a mile on foot

Lots of Franklin “quotes” online are fake, so we used only what’s in his letters. In 1772 he wrote to his son William comparing ways of getting around, and walking won: “more in one mile’s walking on foot, than in five on horseback.” Then a very practical aside about bad weather: some of these exercises “may be had within doors, when the weather discourages going abroad.” (Founders Online)

Rousseau: thinking on foot

In his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau looks back on his journeys on foot: “Walking animates and enlivens my spirits; I can hardly think when in a state of inactivity.” (free text, Book IV)

Henry David Thoreau: the art of sauntering

Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” published in 1862 just after his death, opens with a challenge: “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.” Read the whole essay free at Project Gutenberg, or listen free on LibriVox. In his journal for August 19, 1851, he put it even more simply: “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

Søren Kierkegaard: walking into his best thoughts

The Danish philosopher was a well-known sight on the streets of Copenhagen. In an 1847 letter to his sister-in-law Henriette (“Jette”) Kierkegaard, he wrote: “I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” (Letter 150 in Kierkegaard’s Writings XXV: Letters and Documents, trans. Henrik Rosenmeier, Princeton, 1978.)

Friedrich Nietzsche: “only those thoughts that come by walking”

You’ll often see “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking” credited to Nietzsche. The real line, from Twilight of the Idols (1889), is a jab at the novelist Flaubert, who said one can think and write only while seated: “A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.” (free text, Maxims §34)

Charles Dickens: fast, far, and all night

Dickens walked huge distances around London, often after dark. In his essay “Night Walks” he describes how, unable to sleep, he set out “to walk about the streets all night, for a series of several nights,” and he writes about the city he found in those hours. Read it free in The Uncommercial Traveller, chapter 13, on Project Gutenberg. To his friend John Forster he was blunter: “If I couldn’t walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish.”

Charles Darwin: the Sandwalk

At Down House in Kent, Darwin laid out a gravel path around a strip of land and walked it daily. His son Francis remembered that “he took a certain number of turns every day, and used to count them by means of a heap of flints, one of which he kicked out on the path each time he passed” (Life and Letters, vol. 1). A loop near home and a pile of rocks for counting is the original step counter.

Wordsworth and Beethoven: walking as part of the work

William Wordsworth composed much of his poetry outdoors on foot. His friend Thomas De Quincey later estimated that the poet’s legs had carried him somewhere around 175,000 to 180,000 miles over his life. That’s a friend’s guess, not a measurement, but it gives you the idea. Ludwig van Beethoven is described by people who knew him as taking long walks after his midday meal, with a pencil and music paper in his pocket to catch ideas along the way.

Steve Jobs: the walking conversation

His biographer Walter Isaacson met Jobs to talk about the book on a walk, not in a meeting room, and later wrote that “taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation.” (Steve Jobs, 2011.) You don’t need to be a CEO to try one. Your next phone call works fine.

Edward Payson Weston: the 70-year-old who walked across America

In the late 1800s, long-distance walking (“pedestrianism”) drew crowds the way stadiums do today, and Edward Payson Weston was its star. On his 70th birthday, March 15, 1909, he set out from New York on foot. He made it to San Francisco on July 14, after about 3,900 miles of mud, blizzards, desert heat, and railroad trestles (full story). He missed his 100-walking-day goal by a few days and was annoyed about it. So in 1910 he walked the other direction, Los Angeles to New York. You don’t have to be Weston. But he’s a good reminder that walking doesn’t have an age limit on fun. More old-timers who kept moving: the physical culture elders.

The Ultimate Warrior: walk until you find yourself

“When it gets dark, go out and walk all f***ing night hunting for yourself. Crazy, right? … This weekend, walk until you find yourself.” — The Ultimate Warrior, Dr. Warrior’s Injection of Inspiration

Start small, build up: an everyday walking ladder

None of these people started with a record. Pick the rung that feels easy today, stay there as long as you like, and step up when you want to. There’s no schedule and no finish line.

10 minutes. Out the front door, around the block, back home. That’s the whole plan.
A walk with a purpose. Take a phone call on foot, Jobs-style, or walk to the shop instead of driving. Something to listen to helps: Walk and listen.
Your own Sandwalk. Find a 20–30 minute loop near home and make it your regular. Count laps with pebbles if you want to channel Darwin.
An unhurried hour. Once a week, go somewhere new and wander. Thoreau would call it sauntering.
Count your steps. When you’re curious, start tracking. Some people work toward a big daily number. Strength coach Cody Janko’s 20,000-steps-a-day habit (covered on Standing desk feet) is a fun long-term thing to aim for, not a starting point.
Rain plan. Franklin noted that some exercise “may be had within doors, when the weather discourages going abroad.” A walking pad is one way to keep the habit going on wet days or at your desk. Want a different kind of indoor walk? See Backward walking.

This is general information about history and habits, not medical advice. If you have a health condition or haven’t been active in a while, check with your doctor about what’s right for you.