To Do Good

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

-- Rufus Choate (1799 - 1859), American lawyer, Whig politician, and orator, Speech in the Senate (2 July 1841)

More Anonymous

Every day you waste a chance, many chances in fact, of getting at your innermost consciousness by expressing yourself as you see yourself, and I say it is a pity because it makes you, year after year and day after day, more like anybody else and more anonymous.

-- Ernest Dimnet (1866 - 1954), French priest, writer, and lecturer, The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 250

Responsible For The Evil

Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged.

-- Catechism of the Catholic Church as promulgated by Pope John Paul II (1992), § 2287

Either Or

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.

-- Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936), Austrian journalist, satirist, aphorist, and poet, Die Fackel no. 270/71 (19 January 1909)

Pretense

Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.

-- Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870 - 1938), long-time Justice of the Court of Appeals of New York; he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932, Ultramares Corp. v. Touche, 255 N.Y. 170, 179, 174 N.E. 441, 444 (1931)

Not Many

Multum non Multa [Much, not many].

-- Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (61 - c.113) better known as Pliny the Younger, was very active in Ancient Rome's legal system and was a magistrate under the reigns of several disparate emperors.  "A letter from Pliny the Younger to Fuscus", in which he advised a friend regarding the idea of selecting a few books to read deeply rather than glancing at many.

In The End

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

-- Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936), Austrian journalist, satirist, aphorist, and poet, Die Fackel no. 46 (9 October 1917)