Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and of gold for wares.

Every man lives by exchanging.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services!

Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.

Nature is a tenacious recycler, every dung heap and fallen redwood tree a bustling community of saprophytes wresting life from the dead and discarded, as though intuitively aware that there is nothing new under the sun. Throughout the physical world, from the cosmic to the subatomic, the same refrain resounds. Conservation: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

If a man were living in isolation his income would be literally his product. Make him the monarch and owner of an island, and the fruits that he raises and the clothing that he makes constitute, in themselves, his income. This ceases to be true when trading begins.

The basic rule of free enterprise: You must give in order to get.

I feel like a tree. A tree doesn't feel a duty to start doing something about the earth from which it comes. A tree just has to bear fruit, and leaves and blossoms. It doesn't feel grateful to the earth.

Exchange is creation.

The only people who steal are thieves, and that's a very small percentage of civilization. Most people want to have some way to make the economic transaction valid. They want to return the favor, if you will... return the benefit and reciprocate.

People must help one another; it is nature's law.

No species is more important than others.

Look abroad thro' Nature's range. Nature's mighty law is change.

The money wanted by the public must be purchased at its market price.

There is much concern these days about the taking of wild animals for sport, but against that must be placed the protection given to wild habitats and many other wild species in the process of keeping game … as with everything in nature, it is all a question of balance and this balance can only be achieved by knowledge and understanding …

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

Money performs but a momentary function … when the transaction is finally closed, it will always be found, that one kind of commodity has been exchanged for another

You can't just let nature run wild.

Nature has a way of giving back. And we can never go against it.

I am drawn to the wild not because it is wild but because it is sensible, logical, ordered, stable, resilient. Wild nature is everything we're struggling to regain.

What happens to other species also happens to us.

We don't like trading agony for money

Hence money may be dirt, although dirt is not money.

A world without leopards, well, who would want to live in it?

No money changed hands, of course.