Quotes about fairness
page 11

Thomas Brooks photo
Aron Ra photo
George Rogers Clark photo

“Never was a person more mortified than I was at this time, to see so fair an opportunity to push a victory; Detroit lost for want of a few men.”

George Rogers Clark (1752–1818) American general

After aborting plans to raid Fort Detroit due to a lack of enlistments (1779), quoted in [Wilson, George R., Thornbrough, Gayle, The Buffalo Trace, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 1946, Indiana Historical Society Publications, volume 15, number 2, 189]

Edward Young photo

“Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire II, l. 83.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

Thomas Malory photo

“In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.”

Book I, ch. 25
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

Ursula Goodenough photo
Plutarch photo

“When the candles are out all women are fair.”

Conjugal Precepts
Moralia, Others

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Walter Scott photo
Jeremy Rifkin photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Charles Bowen photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Bill Gates photo

“Life is not fair. Get used to it… Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Though widely attributed to Gates on the internet, this list of life suggestions is actually based on one from Charles J. Sykes. More information at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm
Misattributed

Hillary Clinton photo
H. G. Wells photo

“Suppose, now, there is such a thing as an all-round inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever…? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle’s plea for slavery, that there are “natural slaves,” lies in the fact that there are no “natural” masters… The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then, for a moment, that there is an all-round inferior race… If any of the race did, after all, prove to be fit to survive, they would survive—they would be picked out with a sure and automatic justice from the over-ready condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all-round inferior race in the world? Even the Australian black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving “black-fellows” are there. Every one of them in Utopia has had what none have had on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice, and opportunity…Some may be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of their own or some other race, and so may be transmitting that distinctive thin thread of excellence, to take its due place in the great synthesis of the future.”

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3

Loreena McKennitt photo
Sachin Tendulkar photo

“I fail sometimes, I succeed sometimes, so that's fair enough. It's a package deal. It comes with that package:Failures and sucess.”

Sachin Tendulkar (1973) A former Indian cricketer from India and one of the greatest cricketers ever seen in the world

The art of positive thinking. http://www.storypick.com/quotes-by-tendulkar/

Charlotte Brontë photo

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

Raymond Poincaré photo

“The annual payment [of German reparations] will very likely spread over some thirty years at least. It would therefore be fair and logical for the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads to last for the same length of time…There is, moreover, something quite unusual in the idea of renouncing a security before the amount secured has been completely paid…After the war of 1870, the Germans occupied various French provinces until they received the last centime of the indemnity imposed on France…It is argued that even when the occupation ceased, it could be resumed in the event of non-payment. This option to renew occupation may look tempting to-day on paper. But its bristling with drawbacks and risk. Let us imagine ourselves sixteen or seventeen years ahead. Germany has paid regularly for fifteen years. We have evacuated the whole left bank of the Rhine. We have returned to our side of the political frontiers which afford no military security. Imagine Germany again prey to Imperialism or imagine that she simply breaks faith. She suspends payment and we are obliged to reoccupy. We give the necessary orders, but who will vouch for our being able to carry them out without difficulty?”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Memorandum to Clemenceau (28 April 1919), quoted in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 428.

John McCain photo
Anthony Watts photo
Francis Escudero photo
Dafydd ap Gwilym photo
Fiona Apple photo
Francis Escudero photo

“A gentleman treats his fellow man with fairness, always giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

"Platinum Men", Metro Him, 2007 September-November, p. 66.
2007

Francois Rabelais photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
R. A. Lafferty photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
Draft:Udit Narayan photo

“I was blessed with a good voice but not a good life. We didn't have a radio at home, but when I'd hear Mohammad Rafi's voice emit from a neighbour's radio, I'd be mesmerised. I'd sing for 25 paise at small village fairs.”

Draft:Udit Narayan (1955) Playback singer

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/Id-sing-for-25-paise-at-small-village-fairs-Udit-Narayan/articleshow/27070827.cms

Phillip Blond photo

“The great error of the last 50 years is that conservatives think that they should unthinkingly endorse laissez -faire economics, but as presently conceived the free market destroys most of the things conservatives value; it destroys traditions, family life, societies, cultures, and established ways of doing things. The market place, as understood by contemporary neo-liberalism, is something no genuine conservative should support or endorse.”

Phillip Blond (1966) British philosopher

Source: Den 11. time, Third season, programme 96, 3 March 2008, DR2
Source: Interview with Philip Blond http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx?qid=616842&odp=true&bitrate=low&location=Lyngby&uri=http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx, Den 11. time, DR2, 3 March 2008, Windows Media file, 28 min. (in English with Danish subtitles)

Julian of Norwich photo
Edmund Waller photo

“How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Go, Lovely Rose (1664), st. 2.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
Mahinda Rajapaksa photo

“I say: be fair. Be objective. Don't just come to conclusions based on one-sided "evidence."”

Mahinda Rajapaksa (1945) Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

Interview with Hindustan Times http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/interviewsnews/full-text-of-ht-s-exclusive-interview-with-lankan-president-rajapaksa/article1-1123091.aspx, September 17, 2013.

Charles Krauthammer photo

“If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, April 2, 2009, "Obama’s Ultimate Agenda" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer040309.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

James K. Morrow photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
George Soros photo

“A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Why We Must Not Reelect President Bush (2004)

Alan Greenspan photo
Ben Garrison photo

“When a cartoonist attempts to be ‘fair and balanced’ and ‘understand all sides,’ they have failed. Too many avoid that altogether and instead become comedians. They take any topic and cast about and ask themselves: “What’s funny in this?” I despise that attitude. Sure, satirical humor is an important element, but not the only element. A good cartoonist need not be funny to be effective. Many of my best cartoons are not funny.”

Ben Garrison American political cartoonist

The “Rogue Cartoonist” Ben Garrison on What it’s Like to be a Political Cartoonist During the Presidential Election http://www.lifeandnews.com/articles/the-rogue-cartoonist-ben-garrison-on-what-its-like-to-be-a-political-cartoonist-during-the-presidential-election/ (September 30, 2016)

Julian of Norwich photo
John Oliver photo
Michelle Obama photo
Gerald of Wales photo

“As far as the Cluniacs and the Cistercians are concerned, what follows is a fair appraisal of the two orders. Give the Cluniacs today a tract of land covered with marvellous buildings, endow them with ample revenues and enrich the place with vast possessions: before you can turn round it will all be ruined and reduced to poverty. On the other hand, settle the Cistercians in some barren retreat which is hidden away in an overgrown forest: a year or two later you will find splendid churches there and fine monastic buildings, with a great amount of property and all the wealth you can imagine.”
De duobus tamen ordinibus istis, Cluniacensi scilicet et Cisterciensi, hoc compertum habeas. Locum aedificiis egregie constructum, redditibus amplis et possessionibus locupletatum, istis hodie tradas; inopem in brevi destructumque videbis. Illis e diverso eremum nudam, et hispidam silvam assignes: intra paucos postmodum annos, non solum ecclesias et aedes insignes, verum etiam possessionum copias, et opulentias multas ibidem invenies.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Book 1, chapter 3, pp. 105-6.
Itinerarium Cambriae (The Journey Through Wales) (1191)

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“While we are mindful of the shocking fact that less than one-half of all non-white workers are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, we do not speak for Negro workers only. A living wage should be the right of all working Americans, and this is what we wish to urge upon our Congressmen and Senators as they now prepare to deal with this legislation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966)], as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

Melanie Phillips photo
N. K. Jemisin photo
John Milton photo

“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.”

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 64; comparable to: "Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur" (Translated: "Some might consider him as too fond of fame, for the desire of glory clings even to the best of men longer than any other passion"), Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 6; said of Helvidius Priscus.

George S. Patton photo

“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Though Patton commissioned this prayer and ordered 250,000 copies of it printed with his signature, it was actually composed by Chief Chaplain James H. O'Neill http://www.pattonhq.com/prayer.html Review of the News (6 October 1971)
Misattributed

Anthony Eden photo
Richard Le Gallienne photo

“Art was a palace once, things great and fair,
And strong and holy, found a temple there:”

Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947) British writer

To the Reader English Poems Copland & Day 1895 kindle ebook.

Barbara Ehrenreich photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Richard Hovey photo

“Fair weather weddings make fair weather lives.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

Act i. Sc. 3.
The Marriage of Guenevere (1891)

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Ron Reagan photo
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock photo

“Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Abbey's Road in In Defense of the Redneck (1979), p. 168.

Henry Hart Milman photo

“Too fair to worship, too divine to love.”

Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868) English historian and churchman

The Belvedere Apollo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Kevin Rudd photo

“Labor’s message then is this: we believe in a strong economy; we believe also in a fair go for all, not just for some.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

Rudd's first speech as Labor leader
2006

Frank Stella photo

“If we are the best, it is only fair that they imitate us.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1971 - 2000
Source: Alexander Alberro, ‎Blake Stimson (1999) Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. p. 227

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

To the humble Bee
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ben Jonson photo

“The voice so sweet, the words so fair,
As some soft chime had stroked the air;
And, though the sound were parted thence,
Still left an echo in the sense.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

LXXXIV, Eupheme, part 4, lines 37-40
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Max Beckmann photo

“And the evening of the big Vanity Fair arrived... Perre Rathbone and innumerable people received me in enormous halls. The reporter shot pictures and Mrs. Beckmann [Quappi, his wife] grinned – - o-la-La.... The whole story is a monumental caprice of my situation in Germany before the Nazi's.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

IBeckmann's diary-notes, Saint Louis, 6 October 1947; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 89
1940s

Edmund Waller photo

“A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair;
Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

On a Girdle; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

A. P. Herbert photo

“There's alcohol in plant and tree.
It must be Nature's plan
That there should be in fair degree
Some alcohol in Man.”

A. P. Herbert (1890–1971) British politician

Number Nine ([1951] 1952) p. 151.

François Bernier photo

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon photo
Ben Sasse photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Jose Peralta photo
Hartley Coleridge photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Anita Dunn photo
John Keats photo
Andrea Pirlo photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“I thought I detected in you a sense of fair play. Most dangerous in the Underland, boy.”

Ripred, p. 240
The Underland Chronicles, Gregor the Overlander (2003)

Calvin Coolidge photo

“We have been attempting to relieve ourselves and the other nations from the old theory of competitive armaments. In spite of all the arguments in favor of great military forces, no nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or to insure its victory in time of war. No nation ever will. Peace and security are more likely to result from fair and honorable dealings, and mutual agreements for a limitation of armaments among nations, than by any attempt at competition in squadrons and battalions. No doubt this country could, if it wished to spend more money, make a better military force, but that is only part of the problem which confronts our Government. The real question is whether spending more money to make a better military force would really make a better country. I would be the last to disparage the military art. It is an honorable and patriotic calling of the highest rank. But I can see no merit in any unnecessary expenditure of money to hire men to build fleets and carry muskets when international relations and agreements permit the turning of such resources into the making of good roads, the building of better homes, the promotion of education, and all the other arts of peace which minister to the advancement of human welfare. Happily, the position of our country is such among the other nations of the world that we have been and shall be warranted in proceeding in this direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

John Calvin photo
Michele Bachmann photo
Vālmīki photo
Janeane Garofalo photo
William Drummond of Hawthornden photo

“This Life, which seems so fair,
Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath,
Who chase it every where”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

This Life, which seems so fair http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/this-life-which-seems-so-fair-2/

José Martí photo

“Wings I saw springing
from fair women's shoulders,
and from beneath rubble
I've seen butterflies flutter.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273
Simple Verses (1891)