The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty.
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.
“Of Captain Elliot, already so well known to the government, it would be almost superfluous to speak; in this action, he evinced his characteristic bravery and judgment; and, since the close of the action, has given me the most able and essential assistance.”
Report on the Battle of Lake Erie (13 September 1813); Years later Perry would declare he had sought to minimize what he perceived to be a lack of valor on the part of Elliot, and requested a court-martial against him, for this and other matters.
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Oliver Hazard Perry 5
United States Naval Officer 1785–1819Related quotes
Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s
Context: The Court's decision today is at odds not only with the constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The framers created our constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a 'liberty' that the framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.
“The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.”
Source: "The Meshing of Line and Staff", 1945, pp. 102-104, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 306-7
“Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.”
Book VI, 6.34-[9]; "the true contempt of an invader is shown by deeds of valour in the field" ( trans. http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/jthucbk6rv2.htm Benjamin Jowett)
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VI
Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 118.
On Leading Well
Source: 1980s and later, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 46
On Mahatma Gandhi<!-- p. 506 (1949) / p. 310 (1961) -->
Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: I knew that Gandhiji usually acts on instinct (I prefer to call it that than the "inner voice" or an answer to prayer) and very often that instinct is right. He has repeatedly shown what a wonderful knack he has of sensing the mass mind and of acting at the psychological moment. The reasons which he afterward adduces to justify his action are usually afterthoughts and seldom carry one very far. A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.