“Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's First State of the Union Address (8 December 1801)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

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Thomas Jefferson 456

3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826

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“Find a fraction which, multiplied by itself, shall give 6, or… find the square root of 6. This can be shown to be an impossible problem; for it can be shown that no fraction whatsoever multiplied by itself, can give a whole number, unless it be itself a whole number disguised in a fractional form, such as 4⁄2 or 21⁄3. To this problem, then, there is but one answer, that it is self-contradictory. But if we propose the following problem,—to find a fraction which, multiplied by itself, shall give a product lying between 6 and 6 + a; we find that this problem admits of solution in every case. It therefore admits of solution however small a may be… as small as you please.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

...there is such a thing as the square root of 6, and it is denoted by √<span style="text-decoration: overline">6</span>. But we do not say we actually find this, but that we approximate to it.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

“The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

Letter from Jamaica (Summer 1815)
Context: A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

“God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened, our minds may widen with it; that as our burden is increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to bear it. God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and understanding, uprightness, and godly fear, without which, even in greatest things there is nothing; with which, even in the smallest things there is every thing.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 115.

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Context: With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,—A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

“Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Context: Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

“No nation which has sunk into this state of dependence can raise itself out of it by the means which have usually been adopted hitherto. Since resistance was useless to it when it was still in possession of all its powers, what can such resistance avail now that it has been deprived of the greater part of them?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book Address to the German Nation

Introduction p. 9-10
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) 1808, First Address of Fourteen

“A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, American Federation of Labor v. American Sash & Door Co., 335 U.S. 538, 557 (1949).
Judicial opinions

“As a square number is known to be the product of a number multiplied by itself, so every polygonal number, multiplied by one number and added to another, both of which depend upon the number of its angles, produces a square number. I shall prove this, and shall show also how from a given side to find its polygon and conversely. Some auxiliary propositions must first be proved.”

Diophantus Arithmetica

As quoted by James Gow, A Short History of Greek Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=9d8DAAAAMAAJ (1884)
Arithmetica (c. 250 AD)

“Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364

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