“The man who won the argument, however, was John Locke, the Liberal philosopher, at that time acting as advisor to Sir Isaac Newton, then Warden of the Mint. Locke insisted that one can no more make a small piece of silver worth more by relabeling it a "shilling" than one can make a short man taller by declaring there are now fifteen inches in a foot.”
Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 340
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David Graeber55
American anthropologist and anarchist 1961Related quotes
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"The Expanding Mental Universe", Saturday Evening Post (July 1959)
1950s
I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science
Source: The Cambridge Companion to Newton, 2002, p. 1
John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744) French-born British natural philosopher and clergyman
Source: Course of Experimental Philosophy, 1745, p. vi: Preface
Context: It is to Sir Isaac Newton's Application of Geometry to Philosophy, that we owe the routing of this Army of Goths and Vandals in the philosophical World; which he has enriched with more and greater Discoveries, than all the Philosophers that went before him: And has laid such Foundations for future Acquisitions, that even after his Death, his Works still promote natural Knowledge. Before Sir Isaac, we had but wild Guesses at the Cause of the Motion of the Comets and Planets round the Sun', but now he has clearly deduced them from the universal Laws of Attraction (the Existence of which he has proved beyond Contradiction) and has shewn, that the seeming Irregularities of the Moon, which Astronomers were unable to express in Numbers, are but the just Consequences of the Actions of the Sun and Earth upon it, according to their different Positions. His Principles clear up all Difficulties of the various Phænomena of the Tides; and the true Figure of the Earth is now plainly shewn to be a flatted Spheroid higher at the Equator than the Poles, notwithstanding many Assertions and Conjectures to the contrary.
Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno
and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.
Opening lines
Sylvie and Bruno (1889)
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
“A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Source: Unsourced
Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot
Magee's emotional commentary as John Treacy wins a silver medal the 1984 Summer Olympics.[citation needed]
Olympic Games