thumb|right|[[Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay called for staunch individualism.]]
"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of his recurrent themes: the need for each person to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of his most famous quotations:
: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
This essay is an analysis into the nature of the "aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded". Some of these ideas pertained closely to the values of America at the time. These values included nature, individualism, and reform, and can be noted in Emerson's essay.
Themes
Emerson's themes include the authority of the individual, according to Anne Marie Hacht. Nothing has authority over the self, she says. One particular temptation is to find enlightenment in history but Emerson argues that it can only come from individual searching. He believes that truth is inside a person and this is an authority, not institutions like religion.
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