
“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.”
Letter to James McHenry (10 August 1798)
1790s
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
κρεῖττόν ἐστι μετ᾿ ὀλίγων ἀγαθῶν πρὸς ἅπαντας τοὺς κακοὺς ἢ μετὰ πολλῶν κακῶν πρὸς ὀλίγους ἀγαθοὺς μάχεσθαι.
“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.”
Letter to James McHenry (10 August 1798)
1790s
“Even to a wicked man a divinity gives wealth, Cyrus, but to few men comes the gift of excellence.”
Source: Elegies, Line 149-150
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230)
“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
Letter to Sir William Spring (September 1643)
A Single Eye, All Light, No Darkness; or Light and Darkness One (1650)
Introductory Remarks
Thoughts on African Colonization (1832)
Context: Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage. The great mass of mankind shun the labor and responsibility of forming opinions for themselves. The question is not — what is true? but — what is popular? Not — what does God say? but — what says the public? Not — what is my opinion? but — what do others believe?
"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Florilegium