The Law is reason free from passion.
Aristotle, Politics, Book III, 1287a.32.
Category: Thought
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La Rochefoucauld
Il est plus aisé de connaître l’homme en général que de connaître un homme en particulier.
It is easier to know man in general than to know one man.
François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678).
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Marcus Aurelius
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
Satius est supervacua scire quam nihil.
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
Seneca the Younger, Letter LXXXVIII: “On liberal and vocational studies.”
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
Aristotle, Politics, Book V, 1311a.11.
All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.
Plotinus, First Ennead, II.3.7.
It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: “How did I get into this condition?”
Seneca the Younger, Letter XXXVII: “On Allegiance to Virtue.”
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Marcus Aurelius
A man should be upright, not kept upright.
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Charles Baudelaire
La plus belle des ruses du diable est
de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris (1869; posthumous).
Paraphrased in The Usual Suspects as “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Sketch of the author is by Édouard Manet.
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David Hume
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
David Hume, “Of the First Principles of Government,” in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (London: A. Millar, 1764), vol. I, essay IV.