A famous caution against the passive consumption of knowledge, emphasizing active engagement with texts.
The American Scholar (Primary source)
Delivered as a commencement address at Harvard, this speech was famously dubbed America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., an American polymath. Emerson urged American intellectuals to break free from European traditions and cultivate a uniquely American voice and scholarship, emphasizing the role of the scholar as Man Thinking.
More about “The American Scholar” →
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The years teach much which the days never know.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary sourceMore quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson →
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”
— Ayn Rand Primary source“Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source