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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes about Leadership

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The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.

The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Giving, Energy

If you want to be great and successful, choose people who are great and successful and walk side by side with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Successful, People

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Leadership, Communication

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Leadership, Causes

Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Children, Character
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.505, Library of America

We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Kings, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.303

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Education, Time
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.61, 谷月社

Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Imagination, Seeing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.194, Penguin

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Eye, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.96, Harvard University Press

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Leadership, Hope

If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Kings, Wall
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.244

Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Nice, Dirty
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.32, Harvard University Press

Everyone I meet is in some way my superior.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Sports, Way

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Character, Victory
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.336, Modern Library

Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him; he has become tediously good insome particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Character, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.314, Jazzybee Verlag

Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Destiny, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.477

Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Country, Fashion
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.44, Xist Publishing

If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Fashion, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.69

Where is he who seeing a thousand men useless and unhappy, and making the whole region forlorn by their inaction, and conscious himself of possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his call to go and be their king?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Kings, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1228, Delphi Classics

What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Courage, Morning
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1909). “Essays and English Traits”

The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Men, Office
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.284, Harvard University Press

When a natural king becomes a titular king, every body is pleased and satisfied.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Kings, Body
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.372, Harvard University Press

History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Kings, Class
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1635, Delphi Classics

In every company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and women, and the uninventive or accepting class.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Sex, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.973, Library of America

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being? There are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations withthem, and lead the activity of the human race. And if there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that force to draw material and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense instrumentalities organize around them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership, Men, Race
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.429, Harvard University Press

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