Principles quotes
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"It were better, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that divinity, the better."
"[The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail.All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence."
"A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour."
"The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings."
"Principles have a way of yielding to power."
"If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself."
"The principle of love within us is an attribute of the Deity, and it is placed within us to be dispensed independently according to our own will."
"Where principles and heart stand in conflict with each other, let us make the law of the spirit free from the law of principles."
"If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught. And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion."
"In [the soul] one part naturally rules, and the other is subject, and the virtue of the ruler we maintain to be different from that of the subject; the one being the virtue of the rational, and the other of the irrational part. Now, it is obvious that the same principle applies generally, and therefore almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature."
"Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind."
"Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars."
"[the virtues] cannot exist without Prudence. A proof of this is that everyone, even at the present day, in defining Virtue, after saying what disposition it is [i.e. moral virtue] and specifying the things with which it is concerned, adds that it is a disposition determined by the right principle; and the right principle is the principle determined by Prudence."
"The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses."
"My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another."
"There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature."
"True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution."
"Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated."
"No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property."
"There is one principle which is eternal; it is the duty of all men to protect their lives and the lives of the household, whenever necessity requires, and no power has a right to forbid it, should the last extreme arrive."
