“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader
Letter to Sir William Spring (September 1643)
“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Immanuel Kant200
German philosopher 1724–1804Related quotes
I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science
The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (October 31, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021. <br class="br">1950s
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
Massachusetts must lead in teaching it.
1920s, Law and Order (1920)
William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician
Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter V, Conditional Probability, Stochastic Independence, p. 136.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
Editorial in TheAmerican Mercury (May 1924), p. 26
1920s
Context: The strange American ardor for passing laws, the insane belief in regulation and punishment, plays into the hands of the reformers, most of them quacks themselves. Their efforts, even when honest, seldom accomplish any appreciable good. The Harrison Act, despite its cruel provisions, has not diminished drug addiction in the slightest. The Mormons, after years of persecution, are still Mormons, and one of them is now a power in the Senate. Socialism in the United States was not laid by the Espionage Act; it was laid by the fact that the socialists, during the war, got their fair share of the loot. Nor was the stately progress of osteopathy and chiropractic halted by the early efforts to put them down. Oppressive laws do not destroy minorities; they simply make bootleggers.
Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth
Episode 2, Chapter 4
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.
“The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588
“It is an inflexible law that all living things must seek to dominate their environment.”
Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) British writer
The Uncertain Midnight (1958)