“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

— George Bernard Shaw

Act II; sometimes paraphrased as: The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature.
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
Variant: Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Context: THEODOTUS: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

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George Bernard Shaw 413

Irish playwright 1856–1950

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“THEODOTUS: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”

George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra

Act II; sometimes paraphrased as: The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature.
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

“Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

The Callahan Chronicals (1996) [originally published as Callahan and Company (1988)] "Backword", p. xii
Context: In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a flask, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.

“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 22. Of Custom
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The Christian.. cannot dismiss the philosophy and science of his society as though they were external to him; they are in him. … He cannot rid himself of political beliefs and economic customs by rejecting the more or less external institutions; these customs and beliefs have taken up residence in his mind.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 69

“As men, we have God for our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel. And though every Christian, both as a deist and a Christian, be obliged to study both the law of nature and the revealed law, that in them he may know the will of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent; yet, in neither of these laws, is there to be found a select set of fundamentals, distinct from the rest, which are to make him a deist, or a Christian. But he that believes one eternal, invisible God, his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist; and he that believes Jesus to be the Messiah, his king, ordained by God, thereby becomes a Christian, is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of the Son of God; is actually within the covenant of grace, and has that faith, which shall be imputed to him for righteousness; and, if he continues in his allegiance to this his King, shall receive the reward: eternal life.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

§ 228
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

“Ibn 'Umar said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "On the Day of Rising, a believer will be brought near his Lord until His mercy descends on him and He will ask him to acknowledge his sins and say, 'Do you confess to such-and-such a sin? Do you confess to such-and-such a sin?' He will say, 'Lord, I confess.' He will say, 'I veiled it for you in the world and I forgive you for it today,' and he will be given the page of his good actions."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 433
Sunni Hadith

“Expertise now resides in fanatical customers. The world's best experts on your product or service, don't work for your company. They are your customers, or a hobby tribe.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“The man who is in love with his work will not degrade it for his customer, but while satisfying his customer will honour himself. Thus his desires will be ordered so that he puts working towards finding and following his calling first, and pleasing his customers, second. By this his customers will gain, for he will give of his best; but he will gain more, for he will be laying the foundation of a full life’. This requires great confidence.”

Leon MacLaren (1910–1994) British philosopher

Leon MacLaren, Nature of Society and Other Essays

“Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.
It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 6 : Higher Life
Life and Destiny (1913)

“Forgive but don’t forget, girl keep your head up. And when he tells you you ain’t nothing, don’t believe him. And if he can’t learn to love you, you should leave him.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

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George Bernard Shaw 413

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