This quotation was actually by Henning W. Prentis, Jr., president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, in a February 1943 address entitled " The Cult of Competency http://ergo-sum.net/literature/CultOfCompetency.pdf" delivered at a Mid-Year Convocation of the General Alumni Society of the University of Pennsylvania (The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Vol. XLV, Numb. III, April 1943, pp. 272-73).
This quotation sometimes appears joined with the above one, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election ( "The Fall of the Athenian Republic," http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp Urban Legends Reference Pages):
::A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
::* From bondage to spiritual faith;
::* From spiritual faith to great courage;
::* From courage to liberty;
::* From liberty to abundance;
::* From abundance to complacency;
::* From complacency to apathy;
::* From apathy to dependence;
::* From dependence back into bondage.
Attributed
Source: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
"The Fine, Rare Habit of Learning to Do Without", Every Week magazine, as quoted in http://adventistdigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/adl:352018/datastream/PDF/view The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol 95, No 31, 1 August 1918, pp. 18-19
“And the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”
Source: Crush
Young India, (Bulletin), 2-10-1930, p. 2 In: My God (1962), Chapter 13. Pathways of God http://www.mkgandhi.org/god/mygod/pathwaystogod.html, Printed and Published by: Jitendra T. Desai, Navajivan Mudranalaya, Ahemadabad-380014 India
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
Context: All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection, as they pass through the medium of humanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect. Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one? Every one is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that every one is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it. Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual. Buddha preached the discipline of self-restraint and moral life; it is a complete acceptance of law. But this bondage of law cannot be an end by itself; by mastering it thoroughly we acquire the means of getting beyond it. It is going back to Brahma, to the infinite love, which is manifesting itself through the finite forms of law.
