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Do We Need to Be Understood? — An Idea from Emerson
Are All Great People Misunderstood?
Emerson had some interesting thoughts on being misunderstood. He said:
“Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What Emerson is describing here is that all great men are misunderstood in their time.
All Great Men Are Misunderstood
Socrates was sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth”. Jesus was crucified. Copernicus, who proposed that the earth was orbiting the sun and not the other way around, was called an idiot. Galileo was given the same treatment by stating that the earth was round. And the same for Newton, who defined physics as we understand it today.
These great men, these great people, stood out from the crowd. They declared: “I have Truth that I deem accurate, and I will say it regardless of…
