Variant: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
The Uttarpara Address (1909)
On the death of his friend John Chute (1776)
As quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2011, p. 09
"A Letter to the Friars Minor" (1334) as translated in A Letter to the Friars Minor and other Writings (1995) edited by A. S. McGrade and John Kilcullen, p. 204.
Context: The head of Christians does not, as a rule, have power to punish secular wrongs with a capital penalty and other bodily penalties and it is for thus punishing such wrongs that temporal power and riches are chiefly necessary; such punishment is granted chiefly to the secular power. The pope therefore, can, as a rule, correct wrongdoers only with a spiritual penalty. It is not, therefore, necessary that he should excel in temporal power or abound in temporal riches, but it is enough that Christians should willingly obey him.
“Do not hurry over punishments and do not be pleased and do not be proud of your power to punish.”
Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar
“My friend, I do not blame you for this.”
As quoted in Literature of the American Indian (1973) by Thomas Edward Sanders and Walter W. Peek, p. 294
Context: My friend, I do not blame you for this. Had I listened to you this trouble would not have happened to me. I was not hostile to the white men. Sometimes my young men would attack the Indians who were their enemies and took their ponies. They did it in return. We had buffalo for food, and their hides for clothing and for our tepees. We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on the reservation, where we were driven against our will. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt. We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone. Soldiers were sent out in the winter, they destroyed our villages. The "Long Hair" [Custer] came in the same way. They say we massacred him, but he would have done the same thing to us had we not defended ourselves and fought to the last. Our first impulse was to escape with our squaws and papooses, but we were so hemmed in that we had to fight. After that I went up on the Tongue River with a few of my people and lived in peace. But the government would not let me alone. Finally, I came back to the Red Cloud Agency. Yet, I was not allowed to remain quiet. I was tired of fighting. I went to the Spotted Tail Agency and asked that chief and his agent to let me live there in peace. I came here with the agent [Lee] to talk with the Big White Chief but was not given a chance. They tried to confine me. I tried to escape, and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken.
From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)
“There is a division of duties between the army and its generals. Eagerness for battle becomes the soldiers, but generals serve the cause by forethought, by counsel, by delay oftener than by temerity. As I promoted your victory to the utmost of my power by my sword and by my personal exertions, so now I must help you by prudence and by counsel, the qualities which belong peculiarly to a general.”
Divisa inter exercitum ducesque munia: militibus cupidinem pugnandi convenire, duces providendo, consultando, cunctatione saepius quam temeritate prodesse. ut pro virili portione armis ac manu victoriam iuverit, ratione et consilio, propriis ducis artibus, profuturum.
Book III, 20; Church-Brodribb translation
Histories (100-110)
“It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.”
Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis que d'en être trompé.
Variant translation: It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
Maxim 84.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
