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Every quote we hold, 2473 of them from 233 people across 1123 works. Filter it, sort it, and follow any citation back to the source.
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326
Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.
Warren G. HardingverifiedInaugural Address·March 4, 1921
336
By holding the representative responsible only to the people, and exempting him from all other influences, we elevate the character of the constituent and quicken his sense of responsibility to his country.
337
My aim is to show that only an inappreciable fraction of our ordered and sustained efforts is given to the business of actual living, as distinguished from the preliminaries to living.
341
These young people have had advantages of college, of European travel, and of economic study, but they are sustaining this shock of inaction.
343
Life must needs be disgusting alike to the idle rich man as to the idle poor man, who has no work to do, or, having work, will not do it.
Samuel SmilesverifiedCharacter·1871
345
Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

Attribution contested

The letter opens by naming Paul and the catalogue records that, because it is the only claim the text itself makes. Authorship is disputed: on vocabulary, style and the situation it addresses, many scholars hold it was written in Paul's name by someone in his circle after his death. That was an ordinary practice at the time and is not the same thing as forgery — but it does mean the name on the letter is not settled.

346
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Attribution contested

The letter opens by naming Paul and the catalogue records that, because it is the only claim the text itself makes. Authorship is disputed: on vocabulary, style and the situation it addresses, many scholars hold it was written in Paul's name by someone in his circle after his death. That was an ordinary practice at the time and is not the same thing as forgery — but it does mean the name on the letter is not settled.

347
I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

Attribution contested

Circulated everywhere as if you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else, which appears in none of Washington's books, addresses or letters. This is the sentence in Up from Slavery it compresses. The paraphrase is not unfair, but it is not a quotation, and it drops the second half -- the claim that oppressing the unfortunate makes the oppressor weak -- which is the part he was actually arguing.

348
Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.

Wrongly attributed

Adlai Stevenson used a version of this in his eulogy for Eleanor Roosevelt in 1962, and it has been hers ever since; it is also sold as Confucius and as an old Chinese proverb. It is neither. It is W. L. Watkinson, the English Methodist preacher, in a sermon called The Invincible Strategy, printed in 1907 -- and he presents it as a saying already in circulation rather than as his own coinage. What is certain is that this is the earliest printed appearance anybody has produced, and it predates Roosevelt's public life.

349
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.

Wrongly attributed

Usually quoted as Frankl's own: he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Frankl never claimed it. He quotes Nietzsche in Man's Search for Meaning, and the line is Nietzsche's, from Twilight of the Idols in 1888. The familiar English wording matches no published translation of the period; Ludovici's 1911 rendering is the one above.

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