When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
James Whitcomb Riley, as quoted in Exploring Indiana Highways: Trip Trivia (2007), by Michael Heim.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987).
You can say that not every fish in shark-infested waters is a shark. That doesn’t mean that it’s safe to swim in shark-infested waters.
Charles Upton, in conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove (March 27, 2022).
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.
Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X: “Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society.”
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.
Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X: “Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society.”
Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.
William Stanley Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870), Preface.
[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility.
Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences; it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education.
William Stanley Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870), Preface.
Joseph Warren, “Boston Massacre” oration, March 5, 1772.
May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
Epicurus, as quoted in The Essential Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O’Connor, p. 99.
We set the world afire!