Category: Thought

What strange arts necessity finds out.

Christopher Marlowe, speech of Venus in Dido (c. 1586), Act I, scene i, line 169.

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.

Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (1944), Ch. 1, p. 31.

Ne mireris, si vulgus verius loquatur quam
honoratiores; quia etiam tutius loquitur.

Do not wonder, if the common people speak more truly than those of high rank; for they speak with more safety.

Francis Bacon, Exempla Antithetorum, IX. Laus, Existimatio (Pro.), Book I, v, 8.

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845; 1846), Volume I, Part 1.

Things past recovery
Are hardly cured with exclamations.

Christopher Marlowe, speech of Barabas in The Jew of Malta (c. 1589), Act I, scene ii.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties

Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book I, v, 8.

We have been socialist in Sweden and we have been successful, but never at the same time.

Ἄλλος γάρ τ’ ἄλλοισιν ἀνὴρ ἐπιτέρπεται ἔργοις.

Each man delights in the work that suits him best.

Homer, The Odyssey, Book XIV (Robert Fagles, trans., 1996), line 228.

Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.

Brian Aldiss, Barefoot in the Head (1969).

Οὐ μὲν σχέτλια ἔργα θεοὶ μάκαρες φιλέουσιν,
ἀλλὰ δίκην τίουσι καὶ αἴσιμα ἔργ’ ἀνθρώπων.

The blessed gods have no love for crime.
They honor justice, honor the decent acts of men.

Homer, The Odyssey, Book XIV (Robert Fagles, trans., 1996), lines 83–84.