
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Romans 2:14.
Tyndale's translations
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
“If we insist upon being a law unto ourselves, we make it easier for other nations to do likewise.”
An American Peace Policy (1925)
2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Variant: There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples
Context: The one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.
Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958, p. 327, http://www.savitridevi.org/pilgrimage-09.html)
1840s, The Conservative (1841)
Context: It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are. His greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto the end, whether they second him or not. If he have earned his bread by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked ways which were all an evil law had left him, he will make it at least honorable by his expenditure. Of the past he will take no heed; for its wrongs he will not hold himself responsible: he will say, All the meanness of my progenitors shall not bereave me of the power to make this hour and company fair and fortunate. Whatsoever streams of power and commodity flow to me, shall of me acquire healing virtue, and become fountains of safety. Cannot I too descend a Redeemer into nature? Whosoever hereafter shall name my name, shall not record a malefactor, but a benefactor in the earth. If there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men? On the other hand, these dispositions establish their relations to me. Wherever there is worth, I shall be greeted. Wherever there are men, are the objects of my study and love. Sooner of later all men will be my friends, and will testify in all methods the energy of their regard. I cannot thank your law for my protection. I protect it. It is not in its power to protect me. It is my business to make myself revered. I depend on my honor, my labor, and my dispositions for my place in the affections of mankind, and not on any conventions or parchments of yours.
No. 12, l. 1-4.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)
Speech in the Star Chamber http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst201/SpeechJud.htm(June 1616)[citation needed]
"Postscript", p. 153.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)
Source: "Nature and the Book", stanza XV; p. 67, At the Gate of the Convent (1885)