Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
The intelligent have a right over the ignorant; namely, the right of instructing them.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Education." Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883.
This seemingly abstruse philosophical statement actually found its way into one of the major political debates of the 21st Century when the Secretary of Defense was defending the management of the Iraq War and the interpretation of intelligence. See {586062}.
He meant to say “repository” and not “suppository”. The latter is a capsule of medicine that is placed inside the rectum.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
