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Quote by Robert D. Richardson

“Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.”

Quote by Robert D. Richardson

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Robert D. Richardson
Robert D. Richardson

Robert D. Richardson is an American historian renowned for his in-depth research into American Southern literature and culture. His works delve into the history, literature, and social structure of the American South. more

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“Science was tearing through the 'fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs' to behold a new cosmos, in which our Earth is merely an 'eccentric speck' - a world of evolution 'and unchanging causation'. It invited new ways of thinking. It demanded a new rationale for belief. With science's truths the only accessible ones, 'blind faith' was no longer admirable but 'the one unpardonable sin'.”

“...it may be that there is no God, that the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms, that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain - that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.”