I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841). copy citation

Context

“Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?” source

Meaning and analysis

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