"Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it."

"I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us."

"When he died, Emerson was thought of as the representative American writer par excellence, and his point of view was still so potent that William James was honored to be asked to speak at a centenary celebration."

"Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit."

"Emerson was the chief figure in the American transcendental movement, a fact that complicates all accounts of him in literary or cultural history."