Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.
Interpretation
The quote encourages a mindset of continuous exploration and questioning without succumbing to external influences or rigid beliefs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of maintaining a curious and inquisitive attitude towards life. He advocates for intellectual independence, suggesting that individuals should avoid being swayed by societal pressures or dogmatic thinking, and instead, remain committed to exploring their own understanding and beliefs.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of critical thinking in education.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
He who is not actively kind is cruel!
Truth that is not undergirded by love makes the truth obnoxious and the possessor of it repulsive.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.
There is a universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status.
It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live. If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved in causes which are good for others, not only for yourselves, then it seems to me that that is sufficient, and maybe what you will be is only a matter of chance.
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