
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
Quoted in Time magazine December 8, 1930
Other
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Edison liked the quote and posted it around his factory.
Misattributed
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
Quoted in Time magazine December 8, 1930
Other
“The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.”
Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5<!-- Existence and expediency, p. 85 -->
Context: Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.
“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”
Essays, On Authorship and Style
Context: The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself; that is, it consists in his correctly distinguishing between what is necessary and what is superfluous. On the other hand, one should never sacrifice clearness, to say nothing of grammar, for the sake of being brief. To impoverish the expression of a thought, or to obscure or spoil the meaning of a period for the sake of using fewer words shows a lamentable want of judgment.
Jim Carrey's Unnatural Act (1991)
Context: Imagine if you could actually be that happy? That would be powerful, man. People would be tunneling under the street to avoid you. They'd go "Oh, man — is that happy guy still out there?
"The Organization of Labor," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Organization%20of%20Labor;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0122;idno=nora0135-2;node=nora0135-2%3A2 North American Review, vol. 135, no. 2, whole no. 309 (Aug. 1882), pp. 118–9.
“Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately you occasionally find men disgrace labor.”
Speech at Midland International Arbitration Union, Birmingham, United Kingdom (1877).
1870s