maxim quotes

  • Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      The Modern Traveller, bk.6.

  • Ich solle niemals anders verfahren, als so, dass ich auch wollen k o« nne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden. I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

    - Immanuel Kant
      Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals), ch.1 (translated by H  J Paton).

  • Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it Macaulay down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till theyare fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

    -1st Baron
      'Milton', in the Edinburgh Review,  Aug.

  • Every manwho has seen the world knowsthat nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

    -1st Baron
      'Machiavelli', in the Edinburgh Review, Mar.

  • That grounded maxim So rife and celebrated in the mouths Of wisest men; that to the public good Private respects must yield.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.865^8.

  • The spirit that now resists your taxation in America is†the same spirit that established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your libertiesthat no subject of England shall betaxed but byhis ownconsent. The glorious spirit of Whiggismanimates three million in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as free men.

    -William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
      Speech to the House of Lords, 20 Jan.

  • It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to makethantobuy.Thetaylordoesnot attempttomakehis ownshoe†All ofthemfind itfor their interestto employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours and to purchase with a part of its produce†whatever else they have occasion for† What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom† Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?

    - Adam Smith
      An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.2.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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