Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 145
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal" — "government by consent of the governed" — "give me liberty or give me death." Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih
The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 6.4 (trans. Anton C. Pegis)
Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet
National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.
Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 506.
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)