“Man has three ways of acting wisely. First, on meditation; that is the noblest. Secondly, on imitation; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience; that is the bitterest.”
The Analects, as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 279.
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Confucius269
Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551–-479 BCRelated quotes
Agathon (-448–-401 BC) Athenian tragic poet
Stobaeus, Florilegium, XL, VI, 24, as reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of Quotations (1897), p. 515.
Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher
The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
Context: Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Richard Price (1721–1791) Welsh nonconformist preacher and radical
Source: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), p. 34
George Berkeley (1685–1753) Anglo-Irish philosopher
On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America (written in 1726), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Westward the star of empire takes its way", Epigraph to Bancroft's History of the United States; "What worlds in the yet unformed Occident / May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?", Samuel Daniel, Musophilus (1599), Stanza 163.
According to W. Cleon Skousen, the first four empires are the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, and the (Western, Eastern, and Holy) Roman Empire (Gospel Diamond Dust, Volume Two, Verity Publishing, 1998).
Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist
Source: Transmission: A Meditation for the New Age (1983)