“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.”
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 10
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Louis L'Amour 65
Novelist, short story writer 1908–1988Related quotes
2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)
Context: At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the powerful. And some have said we should not judge their failures by the standards of a later time, yet in every time there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name. We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery 'an evil of colossal magnitude'. We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race.
“One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”
Gloria Allred. (September 13, 1990). Testimony before United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
“Most often we are judging not others, but rather our own faculties in others.”
Le plus souvent nous ne jugeons pas les autres, mais nous jugeons nos propres facultés dans les autres.
Œuvres choisies (Paris: A. Hatier, 1934) p. 774; Andrew George Lehmann Sainte-Beuve (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 301.
“O Time! whose verdicts mock our own,
The only righteous judge art thou!”
Source: The Elephant Vanishes
Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)