Famous Quotes | If the accumulated wealth of the...

If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Speech, January 25, 1841, before the Mechanics’ Apprentices’ Library Association, Boston, Massachusetts. “Man the Reformer,” Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849).

Categories: Essayist, Labor, Philosopher, Wealth And The Wealthy

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