Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance

Every American should be required to read RWE's Essay on Self-Reliance. It's loaded with thoughts and ideals that I think closely match up with the intentions of the founding fathers. Frightening how he unwittingly foresaw November 8, 2016. Great read and jammed-pack with thought provoking one-liners.

"I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things."

"For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face."