Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Freedom

• For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Powerful Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.183, Jazzybee Verlag

• The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Men, Thinking

  1860 The Conduct of Life,'Fate'.

• The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Mean, Feel Good

  "The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude".

• We grant no dukedoms to the few,
  We hold like rights and shall;
  Equal on Sunday in the pew,
  On Monday in the mall.
  For what avail the plough or sail,
  Or land, or life, if freedom fail?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Monday, Freedom, Sunday

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Powerful Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.181, Jazzybee Verlag

• A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Fate, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1859). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life”, p.23

• If you cannot be free be as free as you can.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Liberty, Ifs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.205, Harvard University Press

• So far as a person thinks; they are free.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Thinking, Persons

• Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Men, Liberty

• Outside among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Emotional, Feelings

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.46, Harvard University Press

• My angel,-his name is Freedom,-
  Choose him to be your king;
  He shall cut pathways east and west,
  And fend you with his wing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Freedom, Angel

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.206, Delphi Classics

• If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, War, Democracy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.142, Penguin

• Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Men, Space

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.84, Penguin

• Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.413, Harvard University Press

• Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Fate, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.360, Penguin

• Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise beforea man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Angel, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1534, Delphi Classics

• Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Freedom, Order

• Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Stealing, Goodness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.177, Courier Corporation

• Wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Iron, Liberty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.71, North Atlantic Books

• Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Law, Iron

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, second series”, p.124, Harvard University Press

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville