“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”
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.”
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— 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.”
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“The bell calls others to church, but itself never minds the sermon.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“The eye of a master, will do more work than his hand.”
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— Benjamin Franklin (verified)