Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Source: The Analects, Other chapters
“The weakest man is the one who is able to correct his moral defects, but doesn't take action.”
— Ali
Husayn al-Nuri al-Tabarsi, Mustadrak al-Wasā'il, vol. 11, p. 324
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cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad 601–661Related quotes
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Context: The analysis of the moral man through his actions, and of the intellectual man through his productions, seems to me calculated to form one of the most interesting parts of the sciences of observation, applied to anthropology.
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Source: Memoirs of a Geisha
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This was the lead sentence in an article "Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason" by conservative author J. Michael Waller in Insight magazine (23 December 2003) which a copyeditor (http://www.factcheck.org/misquoting_lincoln.html) mistakenly put quotation marks around, making it seem a quote of Lincoln.
Misattributed
“We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.”
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian
The Irony of American History (1952)
Context: We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.
W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up
Ch. 4, p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma3RAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+a+sort+of+man+who+pays+no+attention+to+his+good+actions+but+is+tormented+by+his+bad+ones+this+is+the+type+that+most+often+writes+about+himself%22&pg=PA11#v=onepage <br class="br">The Summing Up (1938)
“A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.”
Variant: A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man
Source: The Godfather
