“It is a condition which confronts us — not a theory.”
Third Annual Message to Congress (6 December 1887), discussing tariffs. Compare "Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient", Benjamin Disraeli, On Import Duties, April 25, 1843.
Context: Both of the great political parties now represented in the Government have by repeated and authoritative declarations condemned the condition of our laws which permit the collection from the people of unnecessary revenue, and have in the most solemn manner promised its correction; and neither as citizens nor partisans are our countrymen in a mood to condone the deliberate violation of these pledges.
Our progress toward a wise conclusion will not be improved by dwelling upon the theories of protection and free trade. This savors too much of bandying epithets. It is a condition which confronts us — not a theory. Relief from this condition may involve a slight reduction of the advantages which we award our home productions, but the entire withdrawal of such advantages should not be contemplated. The question of free trade is absolutely irrelevant, and the persistent claim made in certain quarters that all the efforts to relieve the people from unjust and unnecessary taxation are schemes of so-called free traders is mischievous and far removed from any consideration for the public good.
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Grover Cleveland 31
22nd and 24th president of the United States 1837–1908Related quotes
“Now in war we are confronted with conditions which are strange
If we accept them we will never win.”
Stanza 1 of "Absolute War" a poem composed by Patton in July 1944, during Operation Cobra as quoted in The Patton Papers 1940-1945 (1996) edited by Martin Blumenson p. 492
Context: Now in war we are confronted with conditions which are strange
If we accept them we will never win.
Since being realistic, as in mundane combats fistic
We will get a bloody nose and that's a sin.
Detached Pages, entry for 1913
Journals 1889-1949
“Theory confronts experiment, and both sides are a mixture of obscurity and clarity.”
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961), p.19
L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 591
Introduction
The Culture of Cities (1938)
Context: Nothing is permanent: certainly not the frozen images of barbarous power with which fascism now confronts us. Those images may easily be smashed by an external shock, cracked as ignominiously as the fallen Dagon, the massive idol of the heathen; or they may be melted, eventually, by the internal warmth of normal men and women. Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal. As life becomes insurgent once more in our civilization, conquering the reckless thrust of barbarism, the culture of cities will be both instrument and goal.
Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam ISBN 0521371406
1920s
It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.
Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland (1956) " Towards a theory of Schizophrenia http://www.psychodyssey.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TOWARD-A-THEORY-OF-SCHIZOPHRENIA-2.pdf" In: Behavioral Science (1956) Vol 1, nr.4, pp.251-254