
“Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
Wen Jiabao (2007) cited in: Joseph Kahn, China isn't looking to replace U.S., prime minister says http://web.archive.org/web/20070317185030/http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/16/news/beijing.php, The International Herald Tribune, 16 March 2007
“Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: The production of motion, molar or molecular, is governed by physical laws, which it is the business of the philosopher to find out and correlate. The law of the conservation of energy overrides all laws, and it is a preeminent canon of scientific belief that for every act done a corresponding expenditure of energy must be transformed.
No work can be effected without using up a corresponding value in energy of another kind. But to us the other side of the problem is even of more importance. Granted the existence of a certain kind of molecular motion, what is it that determines its direction along one path rather than another?
Marilyn's personal diaries, as quoted in Fragments (2010), by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment
Letter to Admiral Henry Seymour, after coming upon part of the Spanish Armada, written aboard the Revenge (31 July 1588 {21 July 1588 O.S.})
Context: Coming up unto them, there has passed some cannon shot between some of our fleet and some of them, and so far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows. … This letter honorable good Lord, is sent in haste. The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails, many great ships; but truly, I think not half of them men-of-war. Haste.