Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 124-125]
“Friday, don't despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used.”
— Robert A. Heinlein, book Friday
Friday (1983)
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Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author 1907–1988Related quotes
“The point is not how we use a tool, but how it uses us.”
Nick Joaquín (1917–2004) Filipino writer
Source: Culture and History
John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher
Variant:
The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. A law, which actually exists, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we regulate our approbation and disapprobation.
John Austin, Austin Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law, 1873, Lecture V
Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 278
“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.”
Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers
Source: The Three Musketeers
Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist
One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)
“The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
As quoted in Coolidge: An American Enigma (1998), by Robert Sobel, Regnery Publishing, p. 243.
1920s
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
"The Great Good Man" (1802).
Context: How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
.........
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.