Best principles & ideas Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“It is true that of far the greater part of things, we must content ourselves with such knowledge as description may exhibit, or analogy supply; but it is true likewise, that these ideas are always incomplete, and that at least, till we have compared them with realities, we do not know them to be just. As we see more, we become possessed of more certainties, and consequently gain more principles of reasoning, and found a wider base of analogy.”

Knows May Ideas Reality Found Principles Knowledge Greater Gains Certainty Reasoning Description Possessed Incomplete Exhibits Analogies

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Lives of the poets

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Lives of the poets

“The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?”

“England was killed by an idea: the idea that the weak, indolent and profligate must be supported by the strong, industrious, and frugal – to the degree that tax-consumers will have a living standard comparable to that of taxpayers; the idea that government exists for the purpose of plundering those who work to give the product of their labor to those who do not work. The economic and social cannibalism produced by this communist-socialist idea will destroy any society which adopts it and clings to it as a basic principle – ANY society.”

“We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets.”

Source: Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

“Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.”

Ideas Facts Reality Principles Agree Endless Abstract Frustration Concrete Penalties Inconsistency

Book:Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

Source: Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

“A major fault, for example, is the fact that, along with the materialist principle, Darwin introduced into his theory of evolution reactionary Malthusian ideas.”

Ideas Facts Principles Example Theory Evolution Majors Faults Reactionaries Theory Of Evolution

Author:Trofim Lysenko

“The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.”

Knows Men Ideas Science Imagination Existence Principles Imagine Conditions Events He Man Contrary New Ideas

Book:The new science: 3 complete works: Where is science going? The universe in the light of modern physics; The philosophy of physics

Source: The new science: 3 complete works: Where is science going? The universe in the light of modern physics; The philosophy of physics

“When we assume God to be a guiding principle well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.”

“It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State, - ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios, - burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.”

Men World Mind Long Ideas States America Heaven Nations Principles Fate Rights Ought Authority Responsible Titles Breasts Abandon Latin Thinker Locked Solitary Destined Conqueror

Author:Lord Acton

“Richard Nixon was a very intelligent and able man. And he had the right ideas. But he did not have the adherence to principles that [Ronald] Reagan had. He did some very good things. We owe to Richard Nixon the volunteer army - he got rid of the draft. And that was a major increase in freedom.”

Men Ideas Able Principles Majors Increase Army Intelligent Good Things Very Good Volunteer Adherence Right Ideas

Author:Milton Friedman

“From this simple phenomenon, this idea of saying something twice, more often, as often as possible, in order to make oneself understood - the most artful things developed... the principle of repetition!”

Ideas Order Simple Principles Understood Oneself Phenomenon Repetition

Book:The path to the new music

Source: The path to the new music

“The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)

“The premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.”

Ideas Facts Problem Home School Given Attention Situation Principles Discipline Mark Rewards Promotion Premium

Book:The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education

Source: The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education

“A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle: and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and the symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.”

Source: On the principles and character of American institutions, and the duties of American citizens, 1856-1891

“Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained.”

Source: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods

“An idea is growing in foreign policy circles in Washington ... that there is no turning back. We are stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan for 25 to 40 years, we are embedded in our prideful unilateralism, and nothing can return us to more traditional American values and principles of action. The hubristic creators of this "inevitability" planned it this way. ... Their failures in Iraq have not stopped the fanatic, power-hungry neoconservatives. ... The hard-liners who dominate this administration ... have led us to eternal conflict with Muslims.”

“The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper. If, therefore, you be not acquiring good principles be assured that you are acquiring bad ones; if you be not forming virtuous habits you are, how insensibly soever to yourselves, forming vicious ones.”

Ifs Men Mind Ideas Whole Principles Subjects Habit Deeper Whole Life Impression Virtuous New Ideas Vicious Assured Barren

Book:Views of Christian truth, piety, and morality: selected from the writings of Dr. Priestley : with a memoir of his life

Source: Views of Christian truth, piety, and morality: selected from the writings of Dr. Priestley : with a memoir of his life

“America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled.”

Source: America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again

“A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional - a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.”

Kind Ideas Reality Values Culture Differences Liberty Principles Tradition Endure Libertarian Former Dimensions Biology Crucial Aggression Hierarchy Axioms

Author:Ilana Mercer

“In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.”

Source: Eclipse of Reason

“When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.”

“Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and--there you have it: Holocaust”

“God has told us Latter-day Saints that we shall be condemned if we do not enter into that principle of polygamy; and yet I have heard now and then (I am very glad to say that only a low such instances have come under my notice) a brother or a sister say, 'I am a Latter-day Saint, but I do not believe in polygamy.' Oh, what an absurd expression! What an absurd idea! A person might as well say, 'I am a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do not believe in him.'”

“Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it!”

Way Writing Trying Ideas Soul Seems Three Simple Emotion Principles Magic Exciting Originals Surface Substance Damn Positively Stirring Iceberg Retaining

Author:Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom.”

“The issue of snacking is complicated. In principle, "grazing" is probably a good idea. It would even out the insulin spikes and things like that from eating large meals. The problem is it makes it harder for people to control the amount they're eating.”

People Ideas Problem Principles Issues Amount Eating Harder Complicated Meals Good Ideas Grazing Insulin

Author:Michael Pollan

“People who snack sometimes sometimes eat kind of thoughtlessly and end up eating a lot more. But in principle, it's a really good idea if you can exert the kind of discipline needed.”

People Ifs Kind Ideas Ends Sometimes Principles Needed Discipline Eating Good Ideas Snacks Eating A Lot

Author:Michael Pollan

“The mischievous idea that all public needs should be satisfied by compulsory organization and that all the means that individuals are willing to devote to pubic purposes should be under the control of government, is wholly alien to the basic principles of a free society.”

Needs Should Mean Ideas Government Purpose Individual Principles Willing Economics Organization Satisfied Aliens Free Society Basic Principles Compulsory Mischievous

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot.”

Way Ideas Principles Location Cinematographers

Author:Paolo Sorrentino

“The idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas and anarchist movements. I think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. Anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.”

Thinking Want Kind Mean Important Ideas Ends Facts Action Evil Lines Common Principles Movement Direct Overcoming Characteristics Anarchism Anarchist Common Denominator Direct Action

Author:Howard Zinn

“If you're running an engineering or finance company, all companies depend on ideas and ingenuity. I think the principles of creative leadership apply everywhere, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're running a hospital.”

Ifs Thinking Ideas Running Company Principles Creative Depends Finance Advertising Hospitals Engineering Ingenuity

Author:Ken Robinson

“I think a lot of people start out full of idealism and fresh ideas. And then a lot of times, being re-elected becomes more important than staying true to your principles.”

People Thinking Important Ideas Principles Staying Idealism Stay True Fresh Ideas

Author:Matt Salmon

“Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.”

Source: Mother Earth Bulletin

“One of the important principles I live by is the idea that you have to contemplate yourself as surrounded by the conditions you intend to produce.”

Important Ideas Principles Conditions Produce Live By Contemplating

Author:Wayne Dyer

“I can understand the Greek idea that there are these these principles of lightening or of war or of wisdom and to embody them, to personify them into a Athena or Aries or whichever god you want makes enormous sense.”

Want I Can Ideas War Principles Enormous Greek Athena Aries

Author:Stephen Fry

“It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.”

Believe Humans Ideas Matter Feelings Human Beings Principles Wind Unique No Matter What Fellows Openness Sunlight Basic Principles

Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.”

Ideas Poetry Order Principles Cases Poet Rose Formulas Combat Atoms Splits Definite Versus Brutality Obscurity Dissociation

Author:Ezra Pound

“How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas?”

Thinking Knows Ideas My Own Existence Consciousness Principles Perception Conscious Active Perceive Repeats

Book:Works: Account of His Life and Letters

Source: Works: Account of His Life and Letters

“Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.”

Ifs Men World Wells Ideas Moments Able Lying Principles He Man Materials Arms Weapons Mass Capable Tools Machines Creator Appropriate Organs Machinery Monstrous Sensory Corresponding Warships

Author:Novalis

“When I am convinced of any principle, it is only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.”

Giving Ideas Feelings Belief Principles Influence Argument Convinced Strikes Superiority Preference

Book:A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections

Source: A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections

“The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea is amusing and enticing; but whether the Almighty is laughing at it and is leading me up the garden path -- that I cannot know.”

Knows Should Ideas Body Light Energy Principles Laughing Path Demand Mass Garden Direct Connections Almighty Equations Amusing Transfers Relativity Leading Me Enticing

Author:Albert Einstein

“Now ... the basic principle of modern mathematics is to achieve a complete fusion [of] 'geometric' and 'analytic' ideas.”

Ideas Principles Modern Achieve Mathematics Fusion Analytics Basic Principles Geometric

Author:Jean Dieudonne

“The idea of God is the type and foundation of the principle of authority and absolutism, which it is our task to destroy or at least to subordinate wherever it manifests itself.”

Ideas Principles Type Authority Tasks Foundation Subordinates Absolutism

Book:The Philosophy of Misery

Source: The Philosophy of Misery

“There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science" - except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.”

“It feels like every person is using their whole brain and heart to figure out these nearly impossible dilemmas about how we do our work, with our principles, in the current conditions. And it feels like the thing we know to be true about working collectively - that we have better ideas together than we do individually.”

Knows Feels Heart Persons Ideas Whole Together Brain Principles Impossible Conditions Figures Currents Being True Dilemma Heart And Brain

Author:Dean Spade

“The K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle was pounded into my head in school and I still follow it today in most of my designs. I know that my most successful efforts are the simplest. I always find myself trying to subtract detail from design concepts in an attempt to distill the idea down to the most basic communication tool.”

Knows Trying Stills Ideas Today School Simple Effort Principles Successful Stupid Design Communication Concepts Tools Details Simplest Keep It Simple

Author:Jeff Fisher

“Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements, the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead.”

“The kingdom of God must never be reduced to talk, ideas and principles. The kingdom of God is power”

Ideas Principles Kingdoms Kingdom Of God

Book:Face to Face with God

Source: Face to Face with God

“In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.”

May Ideas Matter Reason Faith Opinion Principles Cases Clear Judging Authority Evidence All Things Contrary Quitting Revelations Evident Obliged Decree Pretence

Book:An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“Only by walking with God can we hope to find the path that leads to life. That is what it means to be a disciple. After all -- aren't we 'followers of Christ'? Then by all means, let's actually follow him. Not ideas about him. Not just his principles. Him.”

Mean Ideas Christ Principles Path Walking Followers Disciple Walking With God

Book:Knowing the Heart of God: A Year of Devotional Readings to Help You Abide in Him

Source: Knowing the Heart of God: A Year of Devotional Readings to Help You Abide in Him

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Principles Quotes