What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: You ask me what I would “substitute for the Bible as a moral guide.” I know that many people regard the Bible as the only moral guide and believe that in that book only can be found the true and perfect standard of morality. There are many good precepts, many wise sayings and many good regulations and laws in the Bible, and these are mingled with bad precepts, with foolish sayings, with absurd rules and cruel laws.
But we must remember that the Bible is a collection of many books written centuries apart, and that it in part represents the growth and tells in part the history of a people. We must also remember that the writers treat of many subjects. Many of these writers have nothing to say about right or wrong, about vice or virtue.
“Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited.... What a Eutopia - What a Paradise would this region be!”
22 February 1756
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)
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John Adams 202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826Related quotes
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
Napoleon the Little (1852), Book VIII, IV
Napoleon the Little (1852)
“A woman's nether regions should always be shrouded in mystery.”
SNL 12/6/2006.
Weekend Update samples
"A Bad Big Idea".
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
Context: Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free — and should be encouraged — to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
As quoted in A World View of Criminal Justice (2005) by Richard K. Vogler, p. 116
2000s, 2001, Freedom and Fear Are at War (September 2001)
Speech in the House of Commons (10 March 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104593
First term as Prime Minister
Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 14