Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Interpretation
Society often pressures individuals to conform rather than embrace their unique qualities.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that society creates an environment where individuality and self-reliance are stifled in favor of conformity. Emerson emphasizes that this societal conspiracy undermines the essence of manhood and the value of true creativity and reality, promoting a preference for established names and customs over genuine self-expression and originality.
In practice
During a speech about personal growth, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of staying true to oneself.
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?
Sometimes we don't even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols.
A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call.
There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.
I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
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