Book ii, line 470
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
“Every time you drink a glass of milk or eat a piece of cheese, you harm a mother. Please go vegan.”
Public Addresses http://books.google.pt/books?id=QO0gAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+no+nation+on%22&dq=%22There+is+no+nation+on%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=0xzoUseOA6Wp7AbQloGwBw&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA (1879), p. 459
1870s
“How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”
Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?
Les Mots du Général, Ernest Mignon, 1962
Fifth Republic and other post-WW2
“An unsatisfactory agreement is less harmful than a successful lawsuit.”
Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. II.
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604)
“The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read.”
“Don’t eat cheese. There are a million things to eat that are not cheese.”
On eating habits, Rollerderby fanzine (October 1993)
1991–1995
“There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.”
Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize; quoted in The Independent, London (9 December 1989)
Context: There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them — isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?
“As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.”
Epidemics, Book I, Ch. 2, Full text online at Wikisource
Variant translation: The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.
Paraphrased variants:
Wherever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.
Viking Book of Aphorisms : A Personal Selection (1988) by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, p. 213.
Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 72
