WIST

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Heretics, ch. 12 “Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickenson” (1905)
Full text.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) US President (1861-65)
Speech, Washington, DC (11 Apr 1865).
His last public address.

Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 28 Apr 1939 (1954)

Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches.

Bias of Priene (fl. c. 650) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]

Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
State of the Union address (3 Dec 1907)