Henry Powell Spring in 1944; popularized by John F. Kennedy misquoting Dante (24 June 1963) http://www.bartleby.com/73/1211.html. Dante placed those who "non furon ribelli né fur fedeli" [were neither for nor against God] in a special region near the mouth of Hell; the lowest part of Hell, a lake of ice, was for traitors.
According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx President Kennedy got his facts wrong. Dante never made this statement. The closest to what President Kennedy meant is in the Inferno where the souls in the ante-room of hell, who "lived without disgrace and without praise," and the coward angels, who did not rebel but did not resist the cohorts of Lucifer, are condemned to continually chase a banner that is forever changing course while being stung by wasps and horseflies.
See Canticle I (Inferno), Canto 3, vv 35-42 for the notion of neutrality and where JFK might have paraphrased from.
Misattributed
“A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.”
Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)
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Napoleon I of France 259
French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French 1769–1821Related quotes
“My downfall made a great noise: those who appeared most satisfied criticized the manner of it.”
Book XXVIII, Ch. 2: The Opposition follows me.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
“Those who can command themselves, command others.”
No. 407
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
“Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.”
Attributed to Sun Tzu in multiple books and internet sites, but this text does not appear in The Art of War and seems to be a more recent creation.
Disputed
"Yvonne De Carlo Reminds The World There Was Life Before Lily Munster" (1987)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight
Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788) s:The_Federalist_Papers/No._51 Full text at Wikisource
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
“Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.”
As quoted in The Golden Treasury of Thought : A Gathering of Quotations from the Best Ancient and Modern Authors (1873) by Theodore Taylor, p. 227