“When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.”
Maxim 338
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
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Publilio Siro 112
Latin writerRelated quotes
“All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner”
Montaigne, Essais, liv. III, chap. viii.—Faugère
The Art of Persuasion
Context: All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation http://books.google.com/books?id=iRBEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA452& pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make.... let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.
“Men are forever doing two things at the same time: acting egoistically and talking moralistically.”
The Tyranny of Hate: The Roots of Antisemitism : A Translation into English of Memsheleth Sadon (1992), p. 25
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”
Address in Baltimore, Maryland http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=88871 (18 April 1864)
1860s
Context: The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
A Short History of England (1917)
Aphorism (1937), p. 38
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: Body and soul are not two different things, but only two different ways of perceiving the same thing. Similarly, physics and psychology are only different attempts to link our experiences together by way of systematic thought.
Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2