"Meantime the education of the general mind..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”
“Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.”
“The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history, owe themselves mainly to the new subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power.”
More on Social Change
“Victor Hugo said you can stop an invasion of armies, but you can never stop an invasion of ideas. There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. It wasn't until 1920, four years after my mother was born - and she's still alive and healthy - that women were given the right to vote. Now it's hard even to imagine that for the greater part of the history of our country fifty percent of the population was not allowed to vote.”
“What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.”
“We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters.”
More on Ideas
“It is in quiet that our best ideas occur to us. Don't make the mistake of believing that by a frantic kind of dashing around you are being your most effective and efficient self. Don't assume that you are wasting time when you take time out for thought.”
“My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected - ideas of others.”
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”