“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it”
Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it”
Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1712 to William Roscoe (27 December 1820) <br class="br">1820s
“Who Weapons put into a Mad-Man's Hands,
May be the first the Error understands.”
John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic
Fab. XXXVI: Of the Husband-man and the Wood
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 19, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 225.
The Tatler (1711–1714)
Context: There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.