A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good men must not obey the laws too well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
Aristotle

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
Aristotle

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
Aristotle