Maxims Quotes - Page 16

• Christian obligation cannot be made to accord with a law of expediency. The Christian's maxims are, Do right because you are bound to do right. Do right though the heavens fall. There is a world of difference between You had better and You are bound to.

  Francis Landey Patton

  Christian, Fall, Law

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 200, 1895.

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• The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our understanding of society. Most of the advantages of social life, especially in the more advanced forms that we call "civilization" rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ignorance, Civilization, Profound

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Part I. The Value of Freedom, Chap. 2 : The Creative Power of a Free Civilization, 1960.

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• Men cannot labor on always. They must have intervals of relaxation. They cannot sleep through these intervals. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have recreation. And if they have not recreation from healthful sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or, if they have pleasures, which, though innocent, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are liable to become poisoned fountains.

  Orville Dewey

  Sleep, Men, Relaxation

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• You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  Howard W. Koch

  Sheep, Guilt, Lambs

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• He must needs go that the devil drives.

  William Shakespeare

  Fate, Devil, Needs

  William Shakespeare (1998). “All's Well that Ends Well”, p.95, Oxford University Press, USA

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• A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

  Louis Kronenberger

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Achievement

  Louis Kronenberger (1964). “The cart and the horse”

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• Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, "an old and trained engineer," and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Real, Science

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• The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first; begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.

  Walter Bagehot

  Science, Simple, Agency

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• Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Nature, Science, Law

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1916). “New Essays Concerning Human Understanding with an Appealing...: Transtated from the Original Latin, French and German Writeen”

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• Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  House, Poverty, Very Good

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• I understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Law, May, Poor

  Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Arnold Douglas, Rodney O. Davis, Douglas Lawson Wilson (2008). “The Lincoln-Douglas Debates”, p.105, University of Illinois Press

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• It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. "Get a reputation, and then go to bed," is the absurdest of all maxims. "Keep up a reputation or go to bed, "would be nearer the truth.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Truth, Men, Bed

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• The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Men, Envy, Philosopher

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• [Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Ignorance, Science, Errors

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• The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Cutting, Play

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.

  John Marshall

  Justice, Democracy, Adherence

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• What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Sarcastic, Writing

  More Tramps Abroad ch. 23, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

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• With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Daughter, Heart, Littles

  Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Baron, Alfred Lord Tennyson (2014). “Fifty Poems”, p.118, Cambridge University Press

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• I have always laid it down as a maxim -and found it justified by experience -that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex -but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other.

  Lord Byron

  Love, Friendship, Sex

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• There is a simple maxim that I use to express this situation, 'when tolerance becomes a one way street, it leads to cultural suicide.'

  Allen West

  Suicide, Simple, Tolerance

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• To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.

  Alexander Hamilton

  House, Would Be, Credit

  United States. Department of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1828). “Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Prepared in Obedience to the Act of the 10th May, 1800: ... to which are Prefixed, the Reports of Alexander Hamilton, on Public Credit, on a National Bank, on Manufactures, and on the Establishment of a Mint ... Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States”, p.4

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• The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.

  Susan Sontag

  Photograph, Instant, Subjects

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.22, Macmillan

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• Would it not be prudent to get our civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sellout the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Loss, Gun

  Mark Twain (2004). “The Portable Mark Twain”, p.495, Penguin

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• Do you resolve to do the right and to love the true, depend upon it you will get no assistance from this world. Of its maxims, nine out of ten are false, and the other one selfish; and even that which is selfish has a lie at the bottom of it.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Selfish, Lying, World

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• I never thought of myself as a sex symbol. I just do the cover of magazines. I think it’s really unfair men or people in the world think you can’t be both – you can’t be a sex symbol and a serious businessperson. Who says I can’t be both? Who says I can’t do the cover of Maxim and run a production company? Women are complex. Women are beautiful and intellectual and spiritual and social and entrepreneurial. They’re everything. And I think I’m a great example of that.

  Eva Longoria

  Beautiful, Running, Spiritual

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