All necessary truth is its own evidence.
Interpretation
Truth is self-evident and does not require external validation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests that inherent truths carry their own validity and do not need external proof or justification. This reflects a philosophical stance that recognizes the intuitive understanding of certain truths that resonate deeply within us without the need for corroboration from others.
In practice
In a speech about critical thinking, one could reference this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing self-evident truths.
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?
Some countries have good laws, laws which could stem the tide of HIV. The problem is that these laws are flouted. Because stigma gives unofficial license to treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk unlike other citizens.
My divine sign indicates the future to me.
Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day's problems.
The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.
So many vows … they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or another.
Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.
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