“The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such as equality, leads to both absurdity and cruelty.”

The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such a…" by Theodore Dalrymple?
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Theodore Dalrymple 96
English doctor and writer 1949

Related quotes

Marvin Minsky photo

“It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.”

Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds. But this is a subject about which we have never learned very much... Such questions will be answered in time. But it will just prolong the wait if we keep using pseudo-explanation words like "holistic" and "gestalt." …It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.

Henry Moore photo
Adam Smith photo

“Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter x, Part II, p. 168.
Context: Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.

Hanif Kureishi photo

“At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

Elizabeth Blackwell photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation

Denis Diderot photo

“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Dr. Théophile de Bordeu, in “Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot”
D’Alembert’s Dream (1769)

Benito Mussolini photo

“Fascism was not the protector of any one class, but a supreme regulator of the relations between all citizens of a state.”

My Autobiography , New York: NY, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1928) p. 280
1920s

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Bernhard Riemann photo

Related topics