Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.
Interpretation
The quote encourages a mindset of continuous exploration and questioning without succumbing to external influences or rigid beliefs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of maintaining a curious and inquisitive attitude towards life. He advocates for intellectual independence, suggesting that individuals should avoid being swayed by societal pressures or dogmatic thinking, and instead, remain committed to exploring their own understanding and beliefs.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of critical thinking in education.
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?
False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.
The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?
Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.
My definition of stupid is wasting your opportunity to be yourself because I think everybody has a uniqueness and everybody's good at something.
The early morning has gold in its mouth.
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