“Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.”
9 October 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 65
British statesman and man of letters 1694–1773Related quotes
Isha Newsletter, July 14, 2009
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Context: God will not lift a little finger for you, please know, because whatever he has to do, he has done it. His work is not pending. He has done a fantastic job over the creation, isn’t it? He has done a fantastic job. There is nothing to complain. He has put himself into you; beyond that he cannot do anything... Everything that you need now has been given. So, it is your turn to play the game now. Match has started, coach cannot interfere now.
Letter to Vladimir Lenin (21 December 1920); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 426
Variant translation: Whoever holds dear the future of communism cannot embark upon such measures.
It is possible that no one has explained what a hostage really is? A hostage is imprisoned not as punishment for some crime. He is held in order to blackmail the enemy with his death.
As translated in Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution (1970) edited and translated by Martin A. Miller http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/kropotlenindec20.html
Context: Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.
Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? … If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages.
I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods … What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling?
“Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please.”
Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 36
Context: It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please.
quoted by his brother-in-law Claude Terrasse, in 'Introduction' of Pierre Bonnard, John Rewald; MoMA - distribution Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918