Mildness Quotes
More Mildness Quotes
Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio , passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.
john locke— Sec. 81 (Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693))
It is only for those to employ force who possess strength without judgment; but the well advised will have recourse to other means. Besides, he who pretends to carry his point by force hath need of many associates; but the man who can persuade knows that he is himself sufficient for the purpose; neither can such a one be supposed forward to shed blood; for, who is there would choose to destroy a fellow citizen rather than make a friend of him by mildness and persuasion?
Xenophon— Memorabilia of Socrates Bk. 1, ch. 2, as translated by Sarah Fielding in The Whole Works of Xenophon (1840), p. 523
It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.
bertrand russell— "Sources of Intolerance"
It is only for those to employ force who possess strength without judgment; but the well advised will have recourse to other means. Besides, he who pretends to carry his point by force hath need of many associates; but the man who can persuade knows that he is himself sufficient for the purpose; neither can such a one be supposed forward to shed blood; for, who is there would choose to destroy a fellow citizen rather than make a friend of him by mildness and persuasion?
— Memorabilia of Socrates Bk. 1, ch. 2, as translated by Sarah Fielding in The Whole Works of Xenophon (1840), p. 523
Freedom of Speech is ever the Symptom, as well as the Effect of a good Government. In old Rome, all was left to the Judgment and Pleasure of the People, who examined the publick Proceedings with such Discretion, & censured those who administred them with such Equity and mildness, that in the space of Three Hundred Years, not five publick Ministers suffered unjustly. Indeed whenever the Commons proceeded to Violence, the great Ones had been the Agressors.
— Cato's Letters, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (Letter Number 15, Of Freedom of Speech, That the Same is inseparable from Publick Liberty, February 4, 1720).
