Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations, Vol. 2. Edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909, p. 524.
Spinoza was one of the most feared intellectuals in human history—feared that is by the established power structures. He is the only known person who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims—all were forbidden to read his works. He was the enemy of authority and advocated personal reason as the guide for men.
Under perfectly controlled conditions, man and every other organism behaves as it damn well pleases.
See {620073} for a broad classic philosophical view that is similar.
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.
