Discretion Quotes - Page 8

• It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

  Aristotle

  Law, Justice, Judging

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1823). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.4

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• Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.

  John Marshall

  Exercise, Law, Judging

  Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866, 1824.

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• Courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it, and when it is only a kind of instinct in the Soul breaks out on all occasions without judgment or discretion. That courage which proceeds from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Offending, Soul

  Joseph Addison (1721). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq”, p.193

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• It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Work Out, Use

  Thorstein Veblen (1964). “The Nature of Peace”, p.168, Transaction Publishers

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• A fully developed bureaucratic mechanism stands in the same relationship to other forms as does the machine to the non-mechanical production of goods. Precision, speed, clarity, documentary ability, continuity, discretion, unity, rigid subordination, reduction of friction and material and personal expenses are unique to bureaucratic organization.

  Max Weber

  Unique, Organization, Unity

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• The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.

  Warren E. Burger

  Exercise, People, Judging

  "Standards Relating to the Urban Police Function" by Frank J. Remington, American Bar Association: Advisory Committee on the Police Function, (p. 2), 1972.

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• When you approach spirituality as an adventure of being alive, you start as you would any adventure--with a sense of mystery and not-knowing. Instead of searching for answers that make you feel safe, you set out into the vastness of life and death, with a willingness to continually grow. You open up to the possibility that your ordinary life is an extraordinary adventure, and that your joys and sorrows have meaning. Spiritual practice becomes your rudder, offering direction and insight and discretion as you venture into the unknown.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Spiritual, Adventure, Offering

  Elizabeth Lesser (2008). “The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure”, p.16, Ballantine Books

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• Let take a cat, and foster her with milk And tender flesh, and make her couch of silk, And let her see a mouse go by the wall, Anon she leaveth milk and flesh, and all, And every dainty that is in that house, Such appetite hath she to eat the mouse. Lo, here hath kind her domination, And appetite banishes discretion.

  Oswald Barron

  Wall, Cat, House

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• There are some chagrins of the heart which a friend ought to try to console without betraying a knowledge of their existence, as there are physical maladies which a physician ought to seek to heal without letting the sufferer know that he has discovered their extent.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Heart, Trying, Physicians

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• Health and Human Services has an enormous amount of discretion that they have so far used to make it harder to get affordable health care. To make you buy what the government insists you must buy. That doesn`t work.

  Paul Ryan

  Government, Care, Enormous

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, People, Giving

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.206

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• Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Law, Church

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1824). “Epistolary correspondence. Letters from August 1714, to September 1724”, p.332

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• Garlic, like perfume, must be used with discretion and on the proper occasions.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Food, Garlic, Used

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1996). “Cross Creek Cookery”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• O sir, you are old; nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine; you should be ruled and led by some discretion, that discerns your fate better than you yourself.

  William Shakespeare

  Fate, Age, Should

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• The pleasantest part of a man's life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit.

  Joseph Addison

  Party, Passion, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.296

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• Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

  Joseph Addison

  Selfish, Distance, Eye

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.226

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• In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.

  Maya Angelou

  Wise, Innovation, Suggestions

  Maya Angelou (2014). “Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou”, p.30, Random House

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• What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Men, Cunning, Brutes

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• When perfect frankness comes in at the door love flies out of the window.

  Helen Rowland

  Doors, Perfect, Window

  Helen Rowland (2017). “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”, p.13, Litres

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• You shall learn, though late, the lesson of how to be discreet.

  Aeschylus

  Lessons, Late, Discreet

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• The Constitution is very clear: Congress has sole discretion over defining who is and who isn't a citizen and how you become one. It's not the 14th Amendment.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Citizens, Defining, Constitution

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• I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State's authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.

  Adolf Hitler

  Giving, Political, Police

  Richard Breiting, Adolf Hitler (1971). “Secret conversations with Hitler: the two newly-discovered 1931 interviews”

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• If a hundred or a thousand people, all of the same
  age, of the same constitution and habits, were suddenly
  seized by the same illness, and one half of them were to
  place themselves under the care of doctors, such as they
  are in our time, whilst the other half entrusted themselves
  to Nature and to their own discretion, I have not the
  slightest doubt that there would be more cases of death
  amongst the former, and more cases of recovery among
  the latter.

  Petrarch

  Recovery, Doctors, People

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• Always man needs woman for his friend. He needs her clearer vision, her subtler insight, her softer thought, her winged soul, her pure and tender heart. Always woman needs man to be her friend. She needs the vigor of his purpose, the ardor of his will, his calmer judgment, his braver force of action, his reverence and his devotion.

  Mary C. Ames

  Heart, Men, Soul

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• It [is] very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to years of discretion to choose for itself.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Children, Years, Mind

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