Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
Genuine
Yes. In Essays: First Series (1841), Essay II, “Self-Reliance”.
Found word for word by program in the full text.
- Work
- Essays: First Series (Essays), 1841
- Where
- Essay II, “Self-Reliance”
- Found at
- Paragraph 71 of the text
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
[…] The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. […]
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. […]
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. […]
The scene
Emerson has compared society to a company whose members surrender liberty for security. He turns from that diagnosis to the demand for an independent conscience. The paragraph questions inherited religious authority and asks whether apparent goodness is genuine rather than merely respectable.
What it means
Becoming an independent person requires testing social and moral conventions against your own considered judgment.
Often misread
This is not simply advice to look different from other people. Emerson makes nonconformity a question of intellectual and moral integrity, including resistance to respectable labels for conduct one has not examined.
Topics
Related quotes
- Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
- To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. (misattributed)
- Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err and even to sin. Mahatma Gandhi
- Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. Mahatma Gandhi
Sources
Cite it
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series (1841), Essay II, “Self-Reliance”. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/whoso-would-be-a-man-must-be-a-nonconformist/ (31 October 2026).
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