Cast Off Assignment

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward… Let us bow and apologize never more… Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things.

• Emerson, Self-Reliance