Principles famous quotes
05-15-2025
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Books are the basis; purity is the force; preaching is the essence; utility is the principle.
-- A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada -
A Louisiana politician can't afford to let his animosities carry him away, and still less his principles, although there is seldom difficulty in that department.
-- A. J. Liebling -
Rather an end in horror, than horror without end. He could not condemn principles he might need to invoke and apply later. The wolf cannot help having been created by God as he is, but we shoot him all the same if we have to. The great player in diplomacy, as in chess, asks the question,Does this improve me?, not look at the possible fringe benefits If you can't have what you like, you must like what you have.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
True religion, like our founding principles, requires that the rights of the disbeliever be equally acknowledged with those of the believer.
-- A. Powell Davies -
Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins is an essential covenant to make with the Lord. Faith and repentance precede this ordinance. Confirmation and the gift of the Holy Ghost follow baptism. Acceptance of these first principles and ordinances may obtain for us a remission of our sins and assure our salvation. In the ordinance of the sacrament, we regularly renew this and other covenants, and by complying with our part of the covenant, we receive the Spirit of the Lord to be with us.
-- A. Theodore Tuttle -
The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.
-- A. V. Dicey -
The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
-- A.J. Ayer -
The principle of Sturgeon's Razor states that the simplest answer to any problem is 90% crap
-- Aaron Allston -
You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.
-- Abdul Kalam -
If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it.
-- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
-- Adrian Cronauer -
The distinction between right and wrong ("la distinction du bien et du mal", Fr.), is nothing else than their unyielding (or implacable) opposition; thus the moral consciousness is an innate and intimate revelation of the absolute, which goes beyond (or goes pass, or exceed) every empirical data (or given information). It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish ("pourront être édifiées", Fr.) the real basis of morality.
-- African Spir -
The first principle from which stems the moral of about all people at all time; it is summarized in this precept: Love thy neighbour as thyself, and: do as you would be done by.
-- African Spir -
The basic notion of justice, is that the rights of everybody are equals, in principle. In the rights of others, we have to respect our own rights. It is only in that condition that we can reasonnably require that it be respected by others.
-- African Spir -
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
-- Agatha Christie -
On general principle, I boycott shows that don't employ actors.
-- Aisha Tyler -
The task of saving the earth's environment must and will become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world.
-- Al Gore -
Dr. King's general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.
-- Al Sharpton -
Hitler had a plausible case to argue when he claimed that the Anschluss was only the application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination.
-- Alan Bullock -
Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.
-- Alan Cooper -
I'm more inclined to linger in the science pages of 'The Week' magazine. But my principle obsessions are still watching sitcoms and football.
-- Alan Davies -
The principle that light can be in two places at the same time is absolutely extraordinary.
-- Alan Davies -
Evolution is an organizing principle and when we call it a theory, we mean it's a theory, we don't mean that it's a belief that someone holds.
-- Alan I. Leshner -
I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God.
-- Alan Keyes -
In the great Declaration of our principles, it didn't say that all men are created equal 'if you so choose.' It said that all are created equal by the power and the will of God, and that we must respect their rights as we respect that will.
-- Alan Keyes -
The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
-- Alan Lightman -
You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life.
-- Alan Moore -
I have principles and I am not going to be forced to compromise them.
-- Alan Sugar -
Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.
-- Albert Camus -
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
-- Albert Camus -
To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
-- Albert Camus -
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
-- Albert Camus -
Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.
-- Albert Einstein -
All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.
-- Albert Einstein -
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.
-- Albert Pike -
Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world - that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me - is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
This oxidation of hydrogen in stages seems to be one of the basic principles of biological oxidation.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.
-- Alberto Moravia -
All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.
-- Aldous Huxley -
If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught. And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Most lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.
-- Aldous Huxley -
"a fatal and perhaps fateful error of judgment" "...this was the last chance for the United Nations to get a grip on themselves and apply the principles of their Charter"
-- Alec Douglas-Home -
Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle.
-- Aleister Crowley -
The creative principle is less about dogma and more about opening ourselves to the evolution of consciousness.
-- Alex Grey -
I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.
-- Alex Kapranos -
I study chess eight hours a day, on principle.
-- Alexander Alekhine -
There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The only constitutional exception to the power of making treaties is, that it shall not change the Constitution.… On natural principles, a treaty, which should manifestly betray or sacrifice primary interests of the state, would be null.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Opinion, whether well or ill-founded, is the governing principle of human affairs
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The praise of a civilized world is justly due to Christianity;—war, by the influence of the humane principles of that religion, has been stripped of half its horrors. The French renounce Christianity, and they relapse into barbarism;—war resumes the same hideous and savage form which it wore in the ages of Gothic and Roman violence.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality-you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
It is a general principle of human nature, that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it...
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
...great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant...
-- Alexander Hamilton -
You will already have noticed how often Capablanca repeated moves, often returning to positions which he had had before. This is not lack of deciciveness or slowness, but the employment of a basic endgame principle which is 'Do not hurry'.
-- Alexander Kotov -
Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes, tenets with books, and principles with times.
-- Alexander Pope -
Austerity is not part of the European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are.
-- Alexis Tsipras -
What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life?
-- Alfred Kazin -
In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge which are important, will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of WISDOM.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Can the difficulty of an exam be measured by how many bits of information a student would need to pass it? This may not be so absurd in the encyclopedic subjects but in mathematics it doesn't make any sense since things follow from each other and, in principle, whoever knows the bases knows everything. All of the results of a mathematical theorem are in the axioms of mathematics in embryonic form, aren't they?
-- Alfred Renyi -
But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.
-- Alfred Russel Wallace -
I like Arsene for his principles but principles are sort of a restriction and restrictions are always lost possibilities.
-- Alisher Usmanov -
The more clearly a principle is understood by the intellect, the more inexcusable is the neglect to put it into practice.
-- Allan Kardec -
The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle-an architect.
-- Allan Sandage -
There is one principle that should never be abandoned, namely, that the rider must learn to control himself before he can control his horse. This is the basic, most important principle to be preserved in equitation.
-- Alois Podhajsky -
The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work.
-- Anastas Mikoyan -
On the question of whether a behavioral science can in principle be constructed, we shall take no sides. That some kinds of human behavior can be described and even predicted in terms of objectively verifiable and quantifiable data seems to us to have been established.
-- Anatol Rapoport -
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
-- Anatole France -
For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions or hypotheses about them. Since he cannot in any certain way attain to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of geometry for the future as well as for the past.
-- Andreas Osiander -
If we succeed with something, that is only because others are in need of what e have produced. And the more success we have with something, the more people require that we express it. So it goes without saying, as a result of this we in principle never win out, others win. We always lose
-- Andrei Tarkovsky -
Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
-- Andrew Carnegie -
The question I should have asked is not what is the rule, but what is the principle.
-- Andrew Fastow -
Curiously, a principle affects your life whether you are aware of it or not. For instance, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it did, and he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness this principle to create, among other things, airline flight.
-- Andy Andrews -
It's not that I'm not willing to compromise. But I won't compromise on principles.
-- Ann Marie Buerkle -
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
-- Anna Brownell Jameson -
One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.
-- Anne Carson -
For truly in nature there are many operations that are far more than mechanical. Nature is not simply an organic body like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.
-- Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway -
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
-- Anne Rice -
I admire vegetarians who refuse to eat nothing but vegetables in their homes, but I also admire those who put aside those principles or those preferences when they travel. Just to be a good guest.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.
-- Anthony Kennedy -
The case for freedom, the case for our constitutional principles the case for our heritage has to be made anew in each generation. The work of freedom is never done.
-- Anthony Kennedy -
Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity.
-- Antoine Lavoisier -
There are some women who are flirts upon principle; they consider it their duty to make themselves as pleasing as possible to every one.
-- Antoine Rivarol -
Any positive thinker is compelled to see everything in the light of his own convictions.
-- Antoinette Brown Blackwell -
I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian childs existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger.
-- Ariel Sharon -
In principle, I'm sorry that we didn't liquidate him
-- Ariel Sharon -
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
-- Aristotle -
Thus then a single harmony orders the composition of the whole...by the mingling of the most contrary principles.
-- Aristotle -
Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars.
-- Aristotle -
There also appears to be another element in the soul, which, though irrational, yet in a manner participates in rational principle.
-- Aristotle -
[this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to it
-- Aristotle -
The soul has two parts, one rational and the other irrational. Let us now similarly divide the rational part, and let it be assumed that there are two rational faculties, one whereby we contemplate those things whose first principles are invariable, and one whereby we contemplate those things which admit of variation.
-- Aristotle
