A Quote by Hosea Ballou

Of all the ingenious mistakes into which erring man has fallen, perhaps none have been so pernicious in their consequences, or have brought so many evils into the world, as the popular opinion that the way of the transgressor is pleasant and easy.

Hosea Ballou

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Hosea Ballou
American - Priest
April 30, 1771 - June 7, 1852

I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

Benjamin F. Wade

Conscience is a judge in every man's breast, which none can cheat or corrupt, and perhaps the only incorrupt thing about him; yet, inflexible and honest as this judge is (however polluted the bench on which he sits), no man can, in my opinion, enjoy any applause which is not there adjudged to be his due.

Henry Fielding

... when death has been brought upon a saint, we ought not to think that an evil has happened to him but a thing indifferent; which is an evil to a wicked man, while to the good it is rest and freedom from evils. 'For death is rest to a man whose way is hidden' (Job 3:23 LXX). And so a good man does not suffer any loss from it.

John Cassian

Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds; it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.

Carl von Clausewitz

State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

Noam Chomsky

There is not such a mighty difference as some men imagine between the poor and the rich; in pomp, show, and opinion, there is a great deal, but little as to the pleasures and satisfactions of life. They enjoy the same earth and air and heavens; hunger and thirst make the poor man's meat and drink as pleasant and relishing as all the varieties which cover the rich man's table; and the labor of a poor man is more healthful, and many times more pleasant, too, than the ease and softness of the rich.

Thomas Sherlock

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.

Henry David Thoreau

The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.

C. S. Lewis

The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.

Paul Johnson

Every man is of importance to himself, and, therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with his pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes which had never been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.

Samuel Johnson

The death of Christ proclaimed the justice and perpetuity of his Father's law in punishing the transgressor, in that he consented to suffer the penalty of the law himself, in order to save fallen man from its curse.

Ellen G. White

An unholy church! It is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hells laughter, heavens abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church.

Charles Spurgeon

I have no opinion. No, none at all. Opinion is politics, and politics is an evil which has caused many a fellow to be hung while he's still young and pretty.

Stephen King

It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.

Robertson Davies

Above all, it was the style of Quakerism I was brought up with - an aggressive contempt for popular opinion. The assumption is that most people think something that is wrong, which is great.

David Starkey

People make mistakes - they say things they shouldn't have or didn't necessarily mean. But I strongly believe in consequences. If there are none, someone might feel like they've gotten away with something, or that what they said couldn't have been that bad.

Katherine Heigl

A Quote by Hosea Ballou

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