
“878. It's more paine to doe nothing then something.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“878. It's more paine to doe nothing then something.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire (1777-11-25)
Speaking on issues of two duties of the two ideals of conduct and the two forms of duty quoted in page=488.
“Nothing is more incontestable than the existence of our sensations; …”
in the Discours préliminaire de l’Encyclopédie http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_pr%C3%A9liminaire_de_l%E2%80%99Encyclop%C3%A9die.
Context: Nothing is more incontestable than the existence of our sensations;...
“There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.”
Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum.
Book II, chapter LVIII, section 119
Cf. René Descartes' "On ne sauroit rien imaginer de si étranger et si peu croyable, qu’il n’ait été dit par quelqu’un des philosophes [One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another]" (Le Discours de la Méthode, Pt. 2)
Variant: There is nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher has not said it.
Source: De Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC)
“Religion: Benito a Christian?” Time magazine (August 25, 1924)
1920s
“It is absurd in general relativity to speak of a universe in which nothing happens.”
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)
“There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.”
Book II, chapter LVIII, section 119
Cf. René Descartes' "On ne sauroit rien imaginer de si étranger et si peu croyable, qu'il n'ait été dit par quelqu'un des philosophes [One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another]" (Le Discours de la Méthode, Pt. 2)
De Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC)
Original: (la) Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum.
“A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.”