Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Interpretation
The quote critiques those who falsely claim to be free while remaining enslaved by conformity and ignorance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the irony of individuals who boast about their liberty yet are confined by their own lack of critical thought and action. He suggests that true freedom is not merely the right to vote or the existence of important documents like the Declaration of Independence, but rather the personal responsibility to engage in meaningful reflection and to act courageously in pursuit of genuine liberty.
In practice
In a speech about civic responsibility, one could use this quote to emphasize the need for active engagement in 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?
As wave is driven by wave_x000D_ And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,_x000D_ So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,_x000D_ Always, for ever and new. What was before_x000D_ Is left behind; what never was is now;_x000D_ And every passing moment is renewed.
The deceit, the lie of the devil consists of this, that he wishes to make man believe that he can live without God's Word. Thus he dangles before man's fantasy a kingdom of faith, of power, and of peace, into which only he can enter who consents to the temptations; and conceals from men that he, as the devil, is the most unfortunate and unhappy of beings, since he is finally and eternally rejected by God.
The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
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