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Society gains nothing when people who have not reformed themselves try to reform things around them
Drawn from what Ralph Waldo Emerson said
What Ralph Waldo Emerson actually said
- Ralph Waldo Emerson American essayist and lecturer (1803 to 1882)
The criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed, has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become tediously good in some particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.
Where this was said
↗Essays, Second Series (1844)gutenberg.org
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