Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson was quoted as saying, if a man can make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, the world will make a beaten path to his door. His actual statement was written in a journal as follows: “If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs than anybody else, you will find a broad hard beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”