“Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines”
Dissenting in Pearce v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 315 U.S. 543, 558 (1942).
Judicial opinions
Context: The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.
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Felix Frankfurter67
American judge 1882–1965Related quotes
“People should be very free with sex, but they should draw the line at goats.”
Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist
from 1976 interview with Rolling Stone magazine
Sixty things for Sir Elton's 60th (2007)
“The colour line must go; the line will be drawn at personal merit.”
John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop
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Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Preface (8 May 1686)
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
Context: The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical; what is less so is called mechanical. But the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. He that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic: and if any could work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved.
“Drawing the line,
The Boundary line
Between this form and that
Is what the mind does.”
Alex Grey (1953) American artist
Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line