All necessary truth is its own evidence.
Interpretation
Truth is self-evident and does not require external validation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests that inherent truths carry their own validity and do not need external proof or justification. This reflects a philosophical stance that recognizes the intuitive understanding of certain truths that resonate deeply within us without the need for corroboration from others.
In practice
In a speech about critical thinking, one could reference this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing self-evident truths.
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?
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.
As for my own views, they've of course evolved over the years. This conception of 'renouncing beliefs' is very odd, as if we're in some kind of religious cult. I 'renounce beliefs' practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.
The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
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