Maybe this desire to correct people, to tell them that their information is wrong, is a fruitless mission, but I just can’t give it up. My fear is that in the future we’re not going to know the difference between the truth and some inaccurate Facebook post that people just kept sharing for no reason. The above being a great example. This supposed quote is everywhere. Everyone keeps sharing it in various forms. It’s even on a site where apparently students were asked to get together their favorite quotes to share for the school. Which is sad on so many levels. Anyone who has ever read Emerson would immediately question if this was real. It doesn’t sound like him at all. He tends not to make points in short quick sentences like this, and really this sounds like someone was trying to dumb down something he said, and it caught on as the gospel truth. If you want to be inspired by this, if this makes you feel better, then that’s fine, but you shouldn’t feel the need to credit a well-known philosopher just so it’ll sound more legit. In fact, on several sites dedicated to Emerson they do have this quote, but state that there is no known source for it in which to link it to him. It’s become popularized by the world, and so it can’t be ignored in conjunction with his works, but it should be recognized that it is unfounded. I actually downloaded his complete works in PDF just so I could search his essays to be sure. He does talk about things being silly, he does talk about the need for honesty, and how we can be kind, but he never says the above quote at all.
Actual quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
If you want to know about being Silly
“The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.” –The Comic
Honest
“Never a sincere word was utterly lost.” – Spiritual Laws
Kind
“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.” -Friendship
And simply because it’s my favorite quote:
“Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.” –Self Reliance
Funnily enough this popped up on my Facebook memories yesterday and considering I already had this post scheduled I figured I’d tack it on just cause. Now keep in mind this is about a master’s level class I was in and people were misquoting and plagarizing so bad off each other the teacher felt the need to send out this email. The second paragraph is what really cracks me up.
I Randomly Thought This 