Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.
Interpretation
Government should evolve and grow like a living organism instead of being outdated and stagnant.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that government should not be a rigid and unchanging structure, akin to a fossil, but rather, it should be dynamic and capable of growth, like a plant. This metaphor emphasizes the importance of adaptability and innovation in governance, advocating for systems that can respond to the changing needs of society instead of remaining fossilized in outdated practices.
In practice
During a speech on reform, one might say, 'Like Emerson stated, government has been a fossil; it should be a plant to thrive with society.'
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?
Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.
It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls, and through those holes we can get a glimpse of the other and sometimes even like what we see.
And every stone and every star a tongue, And every gale of wind a curious song. The Heavens were an oracle, and spoke Divinity: the Earth did undertake The office of a priest; and I being dumb (Nothing besides was dumb) all things did come With voices and instructions.
I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.
Our entire lives, we're inundated with media and messaging that tells us that to be incarcerated is to be criminal and to be criminal is to be a bad person.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.