A Quote by Multatuli

Principles are things which one calls upon to avoid something unpleasant.

Multatuli

Quote Topics

Avoid Calls Principles Something Things Unpleasant Which

Quote Author

Multatuli
Dutch - Writer
March 2, 1820 - February 19, 1887

We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them and achieve something better. Nobody, however, likes to think about anything unpleasant, even to avoid it. And so the crucial problem of thermonuclear war is frequently dispatched with the label 'War is unthinkable' -- which, translated freely, means we don't want to think about it.

Albert Wohlstetter

It's a mistake to try to avoid the unpleasant things in life... But I'm beginning to consider it.

Charles M. Schulz

Principles aren't something you hear much from politicians these days. Have you noticed? Right across the board, leaders, whatever the political coloring, avoid talking about laws; they avoid talking about principles. They talk about 'our values.' But values can change, and all our packets of 'values' seem to be getting smaller.

Vanessa Redgrave

Of the first philosophers, then, most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved....this they say is the element and this is the principle of things.... yet they do not all agree as to the number and the nature of these principle is water.

Mary Hunter Austin

I think one of the great things is that when I got started, no one would return my calls, and now I get a lot of phone calls, which is good. I have options.

Justin Lin

What can be accomplished by a few principles is not effected by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.

Thomas Aquinas

The tranquility or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the big things which happen to us in life, as on the pleasant or unpleasant arrangements of the little things which happen daily.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.

Bertrand Russell

Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.

Thomas Jefferson

Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.

Thomas Aquinas

I love Larry David's take on things in 'Seinfeld', which is that you shouldn't try to help people because it'll always put you into new situations which are unpleasant.

Graham Linehan

If people are going to do things which have certain consequences that they would rather avoid, they should do whatever they need to avoid the consequences.

Tony Abbott

If you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down

Daniel Handler

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.

Anne Lamott

If I have a fever, I take a Crocin but my wife calls a doctor, my mother calls a doctor. Similarly, investing is not something which a doctor or a lawyer or Internet specialist can really understand. Take professional advice, plan.