Category: Thought

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

Avicenna, “On Medicine” (c. 1020).

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, “Rights.”

[A]s a Republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words that form of government, which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of Republics.

John Adams, “Thoughts On Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies” (1776), passage quoted as epigraph in The State of Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of Georgia, State of Michigan, and State of Wisconsin (see Viva Frei Vlawg, December 9, 2020).

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

John Milton, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” (1650).

Let those who are anxious to improve the health of the poor, through the indirect machinery of law, bring their zeal to bear directly upon the work to be done. Let them appeal to men’s sympathies, and again to their interests. Let them prove to people of property that the making of these reforms will pay. Let them show that the productive powers of the labourer will be increased by bettering his health, whilst the poors’-rates will be diminished. Above all, let them demand the removal of those obstacles which existing legislation puts in the way of sanitary improvements. Their efforts thus directed will really promote progress. Whereas their efforts as now directed are either needless or injurious.  

Herbert Spencer, “Sanitary Supervision,” Social Statics (1851); as quoted in Phillip W. Magness, “Herbert Spencer’s Critique of the Board of Health in 1851” (December 7, 2020).

It is not easy to be wise for all times, not event for the present much less for the future; and those who judge the past must recollect that, when it was the present the present was future.

Gouverneur Morris to Robert Walsh (February 5, 1811).