"Self-Reliance"
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841
The declaration of independence for American individualism and the most-quoted American essay ever written. "Imitation is suicide." A young nation's first philosophical act.
The case against
Emerson writes sentence to sentence, never paragraph to paragraph: detachable aphorisms strung together, contradicting one another, with the line about foolish consistency standing by as a pre-emptive pardon. Push the doctrine an inch and it goes silent on what happens when two self-reliant men collide. American hustle culture has quoted it out of context ever since; the context barely resists.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
