“We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects.”
Liberty Magazine : On complaints by frontier folks on his reforms.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Peter Stuyvesant3
Dutch politician 1612–1672Related quotes
“All these books were written by idle, unoccupied, ignorant men, the slaves of vice and filth. I wonder what it is that delights us in these books unless it be that we are attracted by indecency. Learning is not to be expected from authors who never saw even a shadow of learning. As for their story-telling, what pleasure is to be derived from the things they invent, full of lies and stupidity?”
Quos omnes libros conscripserunt homines otiosi, male feriati, imperiti, vitiis ac spurcitiae dediti, in queis miror quid delectet nisi tam nobis flagitia blandirentur. Eruditio non est exspectanda ab hominibus qui ne umbram quidem eruditionis viderant. Iam cum narrant, quae potest esse delectatio in rebus quas tam aperte et stulte confingunt?
Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) Spanish philosopher
De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523), trans. by C. Fantazzi (1996), Vol. I, p. 47.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher
Section 113 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+pleasure+we+derive+from+doing+favors+is+partly+in+the+feeling+it+gives+us+that+we+are+not+altogether+worthless%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage <br class="br">The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses
J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien. <br class="br">Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm <br class="br">Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Source: On the Gods and Other Essays
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
“The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.