A Quote by James Branch Cabell

Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong

James Branch Cabell

Quote Topics

Any Dead Every Form Living Man Might Necessarily Notion Prove Unborn Universe Will Wrong

Quote Author

James Branch Cabell
American - Writer
April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958

I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.

William O. Douglas

If they can prove that I am wrong by that time, I will give it up to their wisdom, but not after to any one's judgment, till I see the end of another year; for the Lord will begin with a new century; and I will see what he will do, before I will hearken to any man's judgment.

Joanna Southcott

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?

Thomas Paine

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Edmund Burke

To .. all the dispossessed youth of Africa: for perpetuation of communion with ancestral spirits through the fight for African freedom, and in the firm faith that the dead, the living, and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines.

Jomo Kenyatta

Where I grew up, in a remote village at the back of a valley, the old still thought the dead needed attending to - a notion so universal, it's enscribed in all religions. If you didn't, they might exact revenge upon the living.

W. G. Sebald

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.

Victor J. Stenger

An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth. There are many ... passages in the books of the prophets expressing the same idea.

Maimonides

My faith is very important me. I think the notion that there's this greater force outside of ourselves that's created the universe, created challenges, creates opportunity, the notion of man's responsibility to man.

Les Wexner

Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.

Roger Scruton

If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

John Adams

In the Twentieth Century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live. He will possess something higher than all these-a great country, the whole earth, and a great hope, the whole heaven.

Victor Hugo

Man is a historical being : The realisations of the powers of human individuals living at any one time takes the cooperation of many generations (or even societies) over a long period of time. By contrast with humankind, every individual animal can and does do what for the most part it might do, or what any other of its kind might or can do that lives at the same time.