Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Politics

• Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Luxury, Politics

  Essays, Second Series "New England Reformers" (1844)

• On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Real, Writing

  Essays, Second Series "Politics" (1844)

• There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hypocrisy, Politics, Satisfaction

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II”, p.123

• 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".

• Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Law, Good Man

  "Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson".

• Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Sake, Add

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.21, University of Georgia Press

• A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.49, Courier Corporation

• You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Solitude, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.12, Penguin

• A good deal of our politics is physiological.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Politics, Deals, Physiological

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.347, Penguin

• The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Two, Political

  "The Cycles of American History". Book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., p. 23, 1986.

• There are men who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Race, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.429, Harvard University Press

• The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hatred, Selfishness, Radicalism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays: First and Second Series”, p.376, Library of America

• All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effiminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Luxury, Parent

• Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Reform, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1191, Delphi Classics

• Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politics ....?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Law, Political

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.525, Рипол Классик

• Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Political, Individuality

• A bullet had found him, his blood ran out as he cried. No money could save him, so he laid down and died. Ooh, what a lucky man he was.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Blood, Politics

• Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fear, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.130, Harvard University Press

• Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Would Be, Politics, Sincere

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Selected Writings”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

• Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Crafts, Politics, States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.557, Library of America

• We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Wind, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1502, Delphi Classics

• Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Politics, Handicrafts, Poisonous

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.335

• Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Struggle, Winning, Government

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.99, University of Georgia Press

• We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Kings, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.303

• The rhyme of the poet
  Modulates the king's affairs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Poetry, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.144, The Floating Press

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