The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
Interpretation
Individual character and personal growth counteract the negative aspects of government.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of personal integrity and the development of the individual as a remedy for the misuse of governmental power. He suggests that strong and virtuous individual character can help to mitigate the adverse effects of formal structures of government, encouraging people to grow and develop themselves in ways that positively influence society.
In practice
In a speech about civic responsibility, you might quote Emerson to emphasize the need for personal integrity.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Absence, the highest form of presence.
In reality, I never want to grow up.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S's: Sincerity, Simplicity, Sympathy, and Serenity.
It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle - everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
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