
Quoted in Chuck Collins, Nit-Picking Piketty http://inequality.org/nitpicking-piketty/ (2015).
At ASSA http://events.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Play/b6d6725ea1df49c896fc82465f732e9b1d, 01:40:27.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Quoted in Chuck Collins, Nit-Picking Piketty http://inequality.org/nitpicking-piketty/ (2015).
At ASSA http://events.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Play/b6d6725ea1df49c896fc82465f732e9b1d, 01:40:27.
“Some virtues are only seen in affliction and some in prosperity.”
No. 257 (25 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Letter to Abigail Adams (3 July 1776)
1770s
Context: I am surprised at the suddenness as well as the greatness of this revolution... It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting, and distresses yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.
A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28 https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2019/10/04/in-illud-tunc-et-ipse-filius/
“Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.”
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)
Context: I certainly find being the recipient at this celebratory dinner more pleasurable and rewarding than chicken-pox, having now in my life experienced both. But the small girl was not entirely wrong. Writing is indeed, some kind of affliction in its demands as the most solitary and introspective of occupations.
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 59
“comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”
Source: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses