Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

All promise outruns performance.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

If you are good, life is good.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.