Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.

If the equality of individuals and the dignity of man be myths, they are myths to which the republic is committed.

The incessant struggle of the mind to be true to itself, to absorb new truths, to grow, to overcome pressures--these are the painful portion of the independent thinker. Almost his sole reward is the satisfaction of integrity.

To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.