
"The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity," w:Good Reads, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17083930-the-price-of-civilization-reawakening-american-virtue-and-prosperity
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, Aug 17, 2004
2000s
"The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity," w:Good Reads, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17083930-the-price-of-civilization-reawakening-american-virtue-and-prosperity
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 25
Context: I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. <!-- p. 304
“Give lilies with full hands.”
Manibus date lilia plenis.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Line 883
January 5, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)
As quoted in "HK's Tsang apologises for gaffe" at BBC News (13 October 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7042941.stm
Variant transcription or translation:
If you go to the extreme you have the cultural revolution for instance in China. Then people take everything into their hands, then you cannot govern the place. … It was people taking power into their own hands. This is what we mean by democracy.
As quoted in "Hong Kong leader apologises for democracy gaffe" at AFP (14 October 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20070609092458/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_ytPeUlA7mXw3eMQ6WHSo_emsLw
“God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.”
Maxim 715
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave