Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of character over talent in leadership roles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights a common observation in politics: while individuals may possess great talent and intelligence, it is ultimately their character that determines their effectiveness in leadership. He suggests that too often, society values intellectual prowess and oratory skills over moral integrity and the ability to lead with virtue, leading to the downfall of capable individuals at the hands of those with lesser skills but stronger character.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the qualities necessary for effective leadership in politics.
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?
People are reasonably good at estimating how things add up, but for compounding, which involved repeated multiplication, we fail to appreciate how quickly things grow.
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
When you lose the ability to step up and hit the ball as hard and as far as you want, that also affects your ability to will the ball to go where you want it to go, if you know what I mean.
That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless
never write a line you'd be ashamed to read at your own funeral.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
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