What American thinkers once wrote about The Individual

‘It’s instructive to read what authors wrote about core values a hundred or two hundred years ago, because then you can appreciate what has happened to the culture of a nation. You can grasp the enormous influence of planned propaganda, which changes minds, builds new consensus, and exiles certain disruptive thinkers to the margins of society. You can see what has been painted over, with great intent, in order to promote tyranny that proclaims a greater good for all.’ (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
Here I present several statements about the individual, written in 19th century America. The authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and James Fenimore Cooper were prominent figures. Emerson, in his time, was the most famous.
‘All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.’ James Fenimore Cooper
‘The less government we have, the better, – the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of [by] formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘The former generations…sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This post was published at Jon Rappoport on Nov 6, 2017.