Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.
[La vertu s’avilit à se justifier.]Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Oedipe, act II, sc. iv (1718)
Anger is never without an Argument, but seldom with a good one.
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) English politician and essayist
“Of Anger,” Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
(Source)
One approaches the journey’s end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.
George Sand (1804-1876) French novelist, feminist [pseud. for Aurore Dupin]
“Final Comment by George Sand” (Sep 1868)
Published in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929)
When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) English prelate, Catholic Cardinal, theologian
Sermon on Epiphany, Oxford (1839)
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 39, epigraph (1897)
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 3 (1861)
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment (5 Oct 1773)
In James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786). Given as a common saying among doctors.
On general grounds I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence.
Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury (1830-1903) British politician [Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury]
Letter to Sir Henry Peek (1888)
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, New York (11 Nov 1902)
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
Interview, The Charlie Rose Show (27 May 1996)
I have bought this wonderful machine — a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine — it seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy.
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) American writer, professor of literature
The Power of Myth, ch. 1 (1988)
(Source)
From interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers in 1985-86. Broadcast as episode 2 of the PBS television show of the same name. Often truncated: "A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy."
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Christian church father, philosopher, saint [b. Aurelius Augustinus]
Homilies on the 1st Epistle of John Tractatus in epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos], Homily 7 [tr. Browne (1888)]
(Source)
Sermon on 1 John 4:4-12. "Love, and do what thou wilt" - Latin dilige et quod vis fac. Sometimes incorrectly given as "ama et fac quod vis." Alternate translation: "Love and then what you will, do." [tr. Fletcher]
At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.
William O. Douglas (1898-1980) US Supreme Court justice (1939-75)
The Court Years, 1939-1975 (1980)
Comment to Justice Potter Stewart on the arrest of Vietnam War veterans during a peaceful protest on the steps of the Supreme Court building.
A little well-gotten will do us more good,
Than lordships and scepters by Rapine and Blood.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1743)
Administrivia: Working notes
Things are humming along ricki-ticki here at WIST Central. You may have noticed I’ve recently gone to 5 quotes a day, rather than 3. Thereby hangs a tale.
In addition to adding new quotations to the database, I am in a continuing effort to clean up existing entries — generally meaning sourcing them. Resources online for this sort of thing have grown tremendously in the years since I’ve started this effort, with three elements being of particular value in sourcing attributions:
- Bartleby.com: Has some classic quotation books online.
- Wikiquote: An ever-growing adjunct to Wikipedia, with user donated/vetted quotation collections.
- Google Books: Google’s efforts to scan the libraries of the world have led to a lot of primary sources for quotes being put online and searchable. It fills me with joy to find a quote that is unattibuted anywhere in its original form and in context.
My re-research has tended to be alphabetical, going through the listings. I’m currently in the S’s (and, when done, will wrap again around to the A’s). This research, in addition to cleaning up entries (note anywhere the original and last-modified date are different), has two major outcomes:
- I tend to find a lot of other quotes by that author. This leads me to a quote “surplus,” which means I don’t have to spend any research time each day, but can just grab five (or more, but five at the moment) from the ever-growing raw materials text file I keep.
- I face a challenge in keeping the names all mixed up. Sure, I could have “Bertrand Russell” day (and, hey, that’s actually an interesting idea for birthdays and the like), but I’d rather provide a variety each day, both by person, and thematically, and even by alphabet clusters. I’d just as soon a given day didn’t have everyone whose last name begins with “R.” Still, observant observers will observe that some names come up with some frequency, until I go through the quotes I’ve grabbed for those names.
So, that’s what’s going on in the world of WIST. Hope you’re finding it all (except for those occasional bits of administrivia) entertaining, thought-provoking, and interesting.
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
Gaudy Night [Wimsey] (1936)
You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities.
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
“Wonder and Skepticism,” Skeptical Enquirer (Jan-Feb 1995)
Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]
A Shropshire Lad, #62 “The Welsh Marches” (1896)
Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are.Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) German poet, playwright, critic [Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller]
An die Freude [Ode to Joy], st. 1 (1785)
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work –
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) American poet, biographer
“Grass” (1918)
We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.
[Nous cherchons tous le bonheur, mais sans savoir où, comme les ivrognes qui cherchent leur maison, sachant confusément qu’ils en ont une.]
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Notebooks, “Leningrad Notebook” (c.1735-c.1750)
The same notebook has a variation on this: Les hommes qui cherchent le bonheur sont comme des ivrognes qui ne peuvent trouver leur maison, mais qui savent qu'ils en ont une. [Men who look for happiness are like drunkards who cannot find their house but know that they have one.]
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) Swedish diplomat, author, UN Secretary-General (1953-61)
Markings (1955) [tr. Sjoberg, Auden (1964)]
(Source)
It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Logical Atomism (1924)
Some are very busy, and yet do nothing.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #4211 (1732)
(Source)
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
New York Times (1960)
There is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
“Life without Principle,” Atlantic (Oct 1863)
Look at a man in the midst of doubt and danger, and you will lean in his hour of adversity what he really is. It is then that true utterances are wrung from the recesses of his breast. The mask is torn off; the reality remains.
Lucretius (c. 100-c. 55 BC) Roman poet [Titus Luretius Carus]
De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things], I. 55 [tr. Latham (1951)]
Where there’s Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1734 ed.)
(Source)
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture IV “The Future of England,” sec. 151 (1866)
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in this world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Inaugural Address (20 Jan 1953)
One who believes as I do, that free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism as much as to the Church of Rome. The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism” (1920)
Many a long dispute among Divines may be thus abridg’d, It is so; It is not so. It is so; It is not so.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1743)
(Source)
To be gripped by fear is, I believe, the most degrading of all emotions for a human being. In fear personality disintegrates, the human will is paralyzed, and man acts as an automaton.
Anwar el-Sadat (1918-1981) Egyptian soldier and statesman
In Search of Identity (1978)
Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. I think we should adhere to that principle with regard to admission into, as well as life within, this country.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 654-55 (1929)
You’ve got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you’ve got to be a humorist to stay one.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Good Gulf radio show (24 June 1934)
Alcohol is like love: the first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl’s clothes off.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
The Long Good-bye, ch. 12 (1954)
Clever tyrants are never punished.
[Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.]Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Mérope, act V, sc. 5 (1743)
Speech is a kind of action.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Plato, Cratylus (c. 360 BC)
tr. B. Jowett (1894)
At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
My Day (15 Apr 1943)
The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
The Stones of Venice, vol. II, ch. 6, sec. 62 (1853)
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
“Meditation on the Divine Will,” Speech Fragment (Sep 1862)
It is easier to behave your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of behaving.
(Other Authors and Sources)
“Kegley’s Principle of Change”
In J. Peers (ed.) 1,001 Logical Laws (1979)
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Justice in War-Time (1916)
ELRIC: As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds — the sounds of billions of people calling your name.
LONDO: My followers?
ELRIC: Your victims.J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
Babylon 5, 2×03 “The Geometry of Shadows” (16 Nov 1994)
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Ball and the Cross, ch. 4 “A Discussion at Dawn” (1909)
Full text.
FANNY: It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.
[Toutes les sectes des philosophes ont échoué contre l’écueil du mal physique et moral. Il ne reste que d’avouer que Dieu ayant agi pour le mieux n’a pu agir mieux.]
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Dictionnaire philosophique, “Power, Omnipotence” (1785-1789)
We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) Polish-American writer, Nobel laureate (b. Icek-Hersz Zynger)
Interview with Richard Burgin, New York Times Magazine (26 Nov 1978)
My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.
John Keats (1795-1821) English poet
Letter to Benjamin Baily (14 Aug 1819)
The Devil doesn’t make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn’t make us mean. Rather, when we’re mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
My Day (14 Jul 1939)
On Prohibition.
Pray to God and say the lines.
Bette Davis (1908-1989) American actor
(Attibuted)
Acting advice to actress Celeste Holm
To act is to affirm the worth of an end.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“The Class of ’61,” speech on 50th anniversary of graduating from Harvard (28 Jun 1911)