Self-Reliance Self-Reliance "Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's 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.” The first hint of the philosophy
Tools for Self Reliance charity. Its patrons include Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tools for Self Reliance was a member of the anti-poverty campaign Make Poverty History in 2005. The Chief Executive Officer of Tools for Self Reliance is Sarah Ingleby. The original values behind the establishment of Tools for Self Reliance were outlined in a book, Questioning Development by Glyn Roberts. This argued that Northern volunteer-sending organisations should analyse "underdevelopment" in terms of power, and should act in solidarity with manual workers in the Third World. In November 1978, Roberts and other returned volunteers joined with students in Portsmouth in house-to-house collections of unwanted tools.