Self-Reliance

""«Self-Reliance»" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations: «„A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.“» This essay is an analysis into the nature of the “aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded. The first hint of the philosophy that would become «„Self-Reliance“» was presen…