We love force and we care very little how it is exhibited.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on humanity's fascination with power, regardless of its manifestation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote points to the inherent human attraction to force and authority, suggesting that people often admire strength and power without critically evaluating the means by which it is demonstrated. This highlights a certain ambivalence about morality; while individuals may profess to value compassion or justice, they frequently celebrate or accept harshness and domination in practice, revealing a contradiction in human nature.
In practice
In a discussion about political power dynamics, one might use this quote to illustrate the acceptance of power at any cost.
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?
The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.
As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.
It was the meanest moment of eternity.
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.
The forms are evanescent; but the spirit, being in the Lord and of the Lord, is immortal and omnipresent.
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
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