Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I'm not just a boy toy. I have feelings and dreams like anybody else.

I see people as being what their personality is at the moment of expression.

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself.

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

The world and all its wisdom is but a booby, blundering school-boy that needs management and could be managed, if men and women would be human beings instead of just business men, or plumbers, or army officers, or commuters, or educators, or authors, or clubwomen, or traveling salesmen, or Socialists, or Republicans, or Salvation Army leaders, or wearers of cloths.

You do not need to import greatness from another; you just need to act on your own.

It's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism. This can be tricky at times, I suppose, but then so can the tango - particularly if you're dancing alone.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.

Don't ever go with the flow. Be the flow.

Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.

I'm just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

The more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself. In large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

Don't shrink to meet the expectations of others, grow to become the person you want to be.

Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.

Our education apparatus can't be one that produces robots. That can happen in laboratory. There has to be overall personality development.

You should have the opportunity to be more than one person with different people because you have that within you. It's not like you're faking it. If everyone knows you so well and can always get a hold of you, then you're stuck to this thing that people think you are. You should have the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Because you do. Naturally.

How can I be a man if there is no role model?

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.

The unique must be fulfilled.

Your own destiny, create your own recipe.

You cannot be all things to all people. Be unique. Be different. Give to others what you want yourself. And do what you were made to do.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.