“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.”
Helen (412 BC), as translated by Richmond Lattimore
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Euripidés116
ancient Athenian playwright -480–-406 BCRelated quotes
David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature
Part 4, Section 7
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
Context: This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceived in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extraordinary. But this proceeds merely from an illusion of the imagination; and the question is, how far we ought to yield to these illusions. This question is very difficult, and reduces us to a very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it. For if we assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy; beside that these suggestions are often contrary to each other; they lead us into such errors, absurdities, and obscurities, that we must at last become asham'd of our credulity. Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compar'd to those angels, whom the scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings. This has already appear'd in so many instances, that we may spare ourselves the trouble of enlarging upon it any farther.
“For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Source: Giovanni's Room
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone
“Necessity when threatening is more powerful than device of man.”
Efficacior omni arte imminens necessitas.
Quintus Curtius Rufus Roman historian
IV, 3, 23.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book IV
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Often attributed to Hugo as a paraphrase of a similar idea in his Histore d'un Crime (1877): "One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas", the wording of this famous statement actually more closely resembles a passage from the relatively obscure Les Francs-Tireurs (1861) by Gustave Aimard, p. 68 https://books.google.com/books/about/Les_francs_tireurs.html?id=mKI4AQAAIAAJ: <br class="br">Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée. <br class="br">There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck. <br class="br">Translated into English as The Freebooters : A Story of the Texan War (1861) https://archive.org/details/freebootersstory00aima, p. 57, Ward & Lock edition <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.
“Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.”
Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland
No. 36.
Maxims and Moral Sentences
“It has been said that there is nothing more uncommon than common sense.”
Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland
Natural Theology (1836), Bk. II, Ch. III : On the Strength of the Evidences for a God in the Phenomena of Visible and External Nature, § 15; though provided without attribution of author, the saying "There is nothing more uncommon than common sense" has since become misattributed to particular people, including Frank Lloyd Wright.
“The struggle against the religious absurdity is more than ever a necessity today.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…
1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)