“What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.”
Ce qui nous donne tant d’aigreur contre ceux qui nous font des finesses, c’est qu’ils croient être plus habiles que nous.
Maxim 350.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Original
Ce qui nous donne tant d’aigreur contre ceux qui nous font des finesses, c’est qu’ils croient être plus habiles que nous.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
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François de La Rochefoucauld 156
French author of maxims and memoirs 1613–1680Related quotes
“Ultimately what we really are matters more than what other people think of us.”
Parliamentary Debates [Parliament of India] Pt.2 V.12-13 (1951); also quoted in Glorious Thoughts of Nehru (1964), p. 146
Context: Ultimately what we really are matters more than what other people think of us. One has to face the modern world with its good as well as its bad and it is better on the whole, I think, that we give even licence than suppress the normal flow of opinion. That is the democratic method. But having laid that down, still I would beg to say that there is a limit to the licence that one can allow, more so in times of great peril to the State.
Address to the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois. (21 July 1952); published in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952) p. 17
Context: What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.
Source: The Quincunx of Time (1973), Chapter 10, “Weinbaum on Sinai” (pp. 118-119)
Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/jul/12/inequalities-in-london in the House of Commons (12 July 1988).
1980s
1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Context: This is no day for the rabble-rouser, whether he be Negro or white. We must realize that we are grappling with the most weighty social problem of this nation, and in grappling with such a complex problem there is no place for misguided emotionalism. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. There is the danger that those of us who have been forced so long to stand amid the tragic midnight of oppression—those of us who have been trampled over, those of us who have been kicked about—there is the danger that we will become bitter. But if we will become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns, the new order which is emerging will be nothing but a duplication of the old order.
“Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.”
Source: Something Blue