“A recognition of limits, of boundaries, may be the only thing that prevents power from dizzy collapse.”
Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Two, The Encounter With Nothingness, p. 32
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William Barrett (philosopher)25
American academic 1913–1992Related quotes
Montesquieu book The Spirit of the Laws
A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.
Book XI, Chapter 4.
The Spirit of the Laws (1748)
Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "One-liner objections" (Penguin Books, 2011, page 509, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.
“The control and prevention of diseases and epidemics should go beyond boundaries.”
Chen Shih-chung politician
Chen Shih-chung (2017) cited in " No WHA invite, but Taiwan's going anyway http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2017/05/10/497115/No-WHA.htm" on The China Post, 10 May 2017
“People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get.”
Celia Green (1935) British philosopher
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p.15
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Nobel Address (1991)
Context: Being resolute today means to act within the framework of political and social pluralism and the rule of law to provide conditions for continued reform and prevent a breakdown of the state and economic collapse, prevent the elements of chaos from becoming catastrophic.
All this requires taking certain tactical steps, to search for various ways of addressing both short- and long-term tasks. Such efforts and political and economic steps, agreements based on reasonable compromise, are there for everyone to see.
Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 182.
“Aristotle compared the mind of man to a blank tablet on which nothing was written, but on which all things could be engraved. … There is, however, this difference, that on the tablet the writing is limited by space, while in the case of the mind, you may continually go on writing and engraving without finding any boundary, because, as has already been shown, the mind is without limit.”
Aristoteles hominis animum comparavit tabulae rasae, cui nihil inscriptum sit, inscribi tamen omnia possint. … Hoc interest, quod in tabula lineas ducere non licet, nisi quousque margo permittat: in mente usque et usque scribendo, et sculpendo, terminum nusquam invenies quia (ut ante monitum) interminabilis est.
John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) Czech teacher, educator, philosopher and writer
The Great Didactic (Didactica Magna) (Amsterdam, 1657) [written 1627–38], as translated by M. W. Keatinge (1896).
Cf. Aristotle, De anima, III, 4, 430a: "δυνάμει δ' οὕτως ὥσπερ ἐν γραμματείῳ ᾧ μηθὲν ἐνυπάρχει ἐντελεχείᾳ γεγραμμένον· ὅπερ συμβαίνει ἐπὶ τοῦ νοῦ."