6 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Thinking

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on thinking

8. Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

44. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

65. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

71. The ancestor of every action is a thought.

97. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. - 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' - Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

131. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.