“The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.”
Speech on Reform of Representation in the House of Commons (7 May 1782)
1780s
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Edmund Burke270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797Related quotes
“You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel
Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 8
Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Decisions http://byub.org/findatalk/details.asp?ID=4343 BYU Devotional, February 6, 1977.
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer
To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 38
General sources
“Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)
Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 10
Roger Bacon book Opus Majus
Bacon, like Grosseteste, asserts that both the active extramitted species of vision from the eye, and the intramitted species of light from object seen, were necessary for sight.
v. i. vii. 4, ed. Briggs as quoted in A.C. Crombie, Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)
Opus Majus, c. 1267
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism