If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the transformative power of revolution, highlighting the juxtaposition of the old and the new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of living in a time of revolution, where individuals can witness and compare the fading histories of the past alongside the promising potentials of the future. This era of transformation evokes strong feelings of fear and hope, prompting humanity to confront its past glories while embracing the opportunities that change brings.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on social change and transformation.
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?
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires.
Up until 1920, women couldn't vote. Until 1974, married women couldn't get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband's professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife.
Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.
There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.
Design our world so that we have positive social and environmental side effects.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.