
(1857/58)
Source: (Bastiat and Carey), pp. 809–810.
On War (1832), Book 2
(1857/58)
Source: (Bastiat and Carey), pp. 809–810.
“With great wealth comes great pettiness.”
Warren Versus the Petty Plutocrats https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax.html (September 30, 2019)
The New York Times Columns
“You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty.”
Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty. You are great when you carry on your trade lovingly, when you enjoy carving and building and painting and decorating and sowing, when you enjoy the blue sky and the deer and the dew and music and dancing, your growing children and the beautiful body of your woman or your man, when you learn to understand and think about life.
Sixth Talk in New Delhi (31 October 1956) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=570&chid=4889&w=%22It+seems+to+me+that+the+real+problem+is+the+mind+itself%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 561031, Vol. X, p. 155
1950s
Context: It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself, and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness. If I have a little mind and I think of God, the God of my thinking will be a little God, though I may clothe him with grandeur, beauty, wisdom, and all the rest of it. It is the same with the problem of existence, the problem of bread, the problem of love, the problem of sex, the problem of relationship, the problem of death. These are all enormous problems, and we approach them with a small mind; we try to resolve them with a mind that is very limited. Though it has extraordinary capacities and is capable of invention, of subtle, cunning thought, the mind is still petty. It may be able to quote Marx, or the Gita, or some other religious book, but it is still a small mind, and a small mind confronted with a complex problem can only translate that problem in terms of itself, and therefore the problem, the misery increases. So the question is: Can the mind that is small, petty, be transformed into something which is not bound by its own limitations?
“Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious.”
“The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.”
1778
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)