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?
When Zarathustra was alone . . . he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"
Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.
If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some people against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.
By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful.
The future of India lies in its villages
Ever since Darwin, we've been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this.
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