Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.
Interpretation
The power of nations is diminishing as individuals seek personal freedom and identity beyond borders.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects the shifting dynamics of national identity and independence in an increasingly globalized world. As nations lose their once-dominant power and the idea of patriotism becomes less significant, individuals are liberated to choose where they live and how they identify themselves, emphasizing personal autonomy and the breakdown of traditional boundaries.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of personal freedom over national loyalty.
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?
Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God's heart has become one with ours.
Logic doesn't apply to the real world. D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.
Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
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