“The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)
Wealth (Primary source)
In Wealth, Emerson argues that true wealth is not merely material accumulation, but the ability to create and contribute. It stems from aligning oneself with natural laws and serving others, leading to a flourishing and abundant life beyond mere possessions.
“Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and property, and you need not give alms. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and persevering.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)
“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 →
“He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone.”
— Ernest Hemingway (verified)“If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and would embrace at last the universal sphere.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)