A Quote by Edward Gibbon

But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.

Edward Gibbon

Quote Topics

Authority Contest Dexterity Interest Legislator Private Seldom Victorious Vigilant Wisdom

Quote Author

Edward Gibbon
English - Historian
April 27, 1737 - January 16, 1794

Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.

Karl Marx

Be vigilant! Be vigilant! If an evil is minor, resist it nonetheless. If a good deed is trifling, perform it all the same. Only wisdom and virtue can truly win men's devotion.

Liu Bei

Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.

David Hume

Have you ever noticed how few sitting places you find in private gardens? How seldom the versatility and importance of benches is considered? True gardeners, with their peerless taste, dexterity and inspired planting, never stop . . . To sit is almost an offence, a sign of depravity and an outrage towards every felicitous refinement that has gone into making a garden.

Mirabel Osler

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control. And it didn't have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realized that you either became a power or you were crushed.

Joe Strummer

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn't have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed

Joe Strummer

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

Alexis de Tocqueville

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

Epictetus

In the bureaucracy, the identity of state interest and particular private aim is established in such a way that the state interest becomes a particular private aim over against other private aims.

Karl Marx

The laws receive their force and authority from an oath of fidelity, either tacit or expressed, which living subjects have sworn to their sovereign, in order to restrain the intestine fermentation of the private interest of individuals.

Cesare Beccaria

It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds.

Napoleon Bonaparte

It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.

Adam Smith

Before Rocky III, I was minding my own business, there was a Tough Man contest. I won that contest two years in a row and I didn't win because I was the toughest, the roughest or the baddest. I won when I was training for the contest, I told my pastor "They're having a contest and when I win the contest I'm a give you the money so you can buy food and clothes for the less fortunate people in the community." That was what Mr. T was about, that was back in 1979. I didn't have a car then but that's what I'm about.

Mr. T

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Aristotle

So there are five ways of knowing who will win. Those who know when to fight and when not to fight are victorious. Those who discern when to use many or few troops are victorious. Those whose upper and lower ranks have the same desire are victorious.