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«Emerson has said that consistency is a virtue of an ass. No thinking human being can be tied down to a view once expressed in the name of consistency. More important than consistency is responsibility. A responsible person must learn to unlearn what he has learned. A responsible person must have the courage to rethink and change his thoughts. Of course there must be good and sufficient reason for unlearning what he has learned and for recasting his thoughts. There can be no finality in rethinking.»

«There is no doubt that Emerson was a yea-sayer. He did celebrate the daylight and hope in preference to blackness and despair.»

«Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.»

«More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past»

«There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, / Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on; / Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, / Is some of it pr - No, 'tis not even prose.»

«Some may try and tell us that this is the end of an era. But what they overlook is that in America, every day is a new beginning, and every sunset is merely the latest milestone on a voyage that never ends. For this is the land that has never become, but is always in the act of becoming. Emerson was right: America is the land of tomorrow.»