Quote #152

Hence, 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.

More from Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure convey…
  2. We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the inf…
  3. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of fig…
  4. Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as bea…
  5. Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?
  6. Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much.
  7. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
  8. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

All Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes