Ralph Waldo Emerson on Society
1803–1882 United States
← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
13 quotes
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature.
The virtues of society are the vices of the saint.
Yield not one inch to all the forces which conspire to make you an echo.
The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they, thought.
Good bye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.
Poems (1847)
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his.
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
Conformity is the ape of harmony.
The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.