“I found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the harvest of others.”
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
“I found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the harvest of others.”
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
“Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public RECORDS to be True.”
Annotations to An Apology for the Bible by R. Watson
1790s
“Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.”
Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing”
As quoted by George Sweeting (senior pastor at Moody Church and former President of the Moody Bible Institute), in Talking it over http://books.google.es/books?id=3U47r8goSvwC&q=%22To+be+a+Christian+without+prayer+is+no+more+possible+than+to+be+alive+without+breathing%22&dq=%22To+be+a+Christian+without+prayer+is+no+more+possible+than+to+be+alive+without+breathing%22&hl=es&sa=X&ei=zJ47UubGKKasyAHvuoDoCA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwATgK (Sep. 1, 1979), p. 88. and The Basics of the Christian Life (Aug 1, 1983), p. 83. No earlier sources are pointed out.
Disputed
“There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.”
Book I, Ch. 39
Attributed
Variant: There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
“Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.”
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991) by Edward Teller, Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley, Ch. 9, p. 135 footnote
“Nothing is more false than the axiom that governments are belligerent and peoples are pacific.”
Action Française (3 July 1913), quoted in William R. Keylor, Jacques Bainville and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-Century France (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 65.
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
Book IV, ch. 27.
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)
“Ruling hell might be better than being a subject in hell, but not by much.”
Other
“Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale than ever before.”
The Spirit of Democracy (1906).
“To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both eyes, is easier than to think.”
Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 67; quoting William Cowper)
“There is more to be gained by producing more opportunities than by optimizing existing ones.”
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)
“The major incentive to productivity and efficiency are social and moral rather than financial.”
1930s- 1950s, The New Society (1950)
“Religion has no more place in science than science has in religion.”
Answer from Pasteur to his disciple Elie Metchnikoff when was questioned whether his approach to spontaneous generation was bound to a religious ideal. According to Patrice Debré's Luis Pasteur, 2000 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RzOcl-FLw30C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA176#v=onepage&q&f=false,, p. 176.
Disputed
“Want to know what’s more destructive than a nuclear bomb? Words.”
Source: This is cannot be attributes to Kim Jong-un, this quote comes from movie The Interview (II) (2014)
Why was he incensed? A prolonged exchange failed to illuminate me. No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem. It is hard enough to accept the fact that they really believe the nonsense of their faiths. I always wonder if they are pulling my leg with a straight face.
Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 58 (pp. 414-415)
“I see myself as sort-of the left’s ‘immune system’; no more than that.”
ContraPoints, Miscellaneous, Contrapoints Is De-Radicalizing Young, Right-Wing Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k (Vice News, 2019)
“If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice.”
However a quote very similar to this one can actually be found in his works. In Sermon XXVII (Walshe translation/in Quint Sermon XXXIV) we can read:
Middle High German: Haete der mensche niht me ze tuonne mit gote, dan daz er dankbaere ist, ez waere genuoc.
Disputed
“Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.”
§ 70
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)