“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)
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.
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“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson →
“Good criticism is very rare, and always precious.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“Be always ashamed to catch thyself idle.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“Do not do that which you would not have known.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)