“First, prayer; then, atonement; in the third place, very much 'in the third place', action.”

Banville on Saturday http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/05/banville_on_sat.html, from The New York Review of Books (source dated 10 May 2005).

Variant translation: If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.
Chapter I, section 4
Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC)

To the Is-land, chap. 1, ‘‘In the Second Place’’, 1982

Bruce Bartlett, "Keynesian Policy and Development Economics" in Dissent on Keynes (1992).
1990s

Lives of the Ten Orators
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: The origin of things, considered not as leading to anything, but in itself, contains the idea of First, the end of things that of Second, the process mediating between them that of Third. A philosophy which emphasises the idea of the One, is generally a dualistic philosophy in which the conception of Second receives exaggerated attention: for this One (though of course involving the idea of First) is always the other of a manifold which is not one. The idea of the Many, because variety is arbitrariness and arbitrariness is repudiation of any Secondness, has for its principal component the conception of First. In psychology Feeling is First, Sense of reaction Second, General conception Third, or mediation. In biology, the idea of arbitrary sporting is First, heredity is Second, the process whereby the accidental characters become fixed is Third. Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third.

Televised speech on the proclamation of Martial Law (September 21, 1972)
1965

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)