Freedom Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

64 Freedom quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Freedom quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Emerson’s 64 reflections on liberty pulse with his trademark advocacy for self‑reliance and the wild spirit of the individual. The breadth of his thoughts provides a rich, layered view of what it means to be free.

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So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you cannot be free be as free as you can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Free should be the scholar - free and brave.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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America means opportunity, freedom, power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Liberty is a slow fruit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Lawyers are a prudent race though not very fond of liberty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We honor the rich because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man, proper…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, -when a light, a freedom, a power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own;…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant.This result might…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“But if there be a country which cannot stand any one of these tests, — a country where knowledge cannot be diffused…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Put any company of people together with freedom for conversation, and a rapid self-distribution takes place into sets and pairs. The best…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the power ofpersons…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

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If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

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If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

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A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his…

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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The order of things consents to virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Life only avails, not the having lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I am; therefore, I had nothing better to do than to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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