States Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no king or sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate; Each to all is venerable.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson