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 of power between and within nations. By the mid 1990s, similar organisations had formed in Europe, Australia and Japan, and Tools for Self Reliance was taking its message to international conferences such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Geneva, 1990) and the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen (1995). Tools for Self Reliance Tools for Self Reliance (www.tfsr.org) is an international development charity in the United Kingdom which recycles and refurbishes tools and sewing machines and supplies them to partners in Africa in conjunction with training programmes. Tools for Self Reliance has a network of volunteers