Letter to John Wayles Eppes (9 September 1814). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://files.libertyfund.org/files/807/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 425-426
1810s
Context: [... ] Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it’s banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only.
“Bad principles are not a good substitute for no principles.”
Donald Trump is actually a fascist (December 9, 2016)
Context: If I’m correct that Trump actually has a governing philosophy, that’s a bad thing, not a good thing. If he actually has principles to guide him through those famous swamps he plans to drain, that’s alarming, not reassuring. Bad principles are not a good substitute for no principles. Four or eight years of bad principles may make no principles look pretty good.
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Michael Kinsley 6
American political journalist, commentator television host 1951Related quotes
Undated entry of December 1863 or early 1864, as translated by Humphry Ward (1893), p. 215
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
“Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose.”
Remarks during the 1976 US Presidential http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1502532,00.html
1970s
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 194
Context: To the gentle, many will be gentle; to the kind, many will be kind. A good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man will find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle will find principle and integrity in the hearts of others.
There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the bitterest of evils; and no trials which it may not transform into the noblest and divinest blessings. There are no temptations from which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and subdued.
Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 6
“The first principle of good barn design is flexibility of space.”
p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)
“The first principle of child-rearing is to choose a good mother.”
“To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.”
Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 309