Observations of Others

Law and order quotations

Where the legal system fails, violence begins.
Hugo de Groot 1583-1645, Dutch brilliant lawyer and historian in ‘De jure belli ac pacis’ (About the law of war and peace), still the basis of modern international law (1625)

Comradeship and trust will emerge naturally when discipline and high standards are enforced.
Tao Zhu Gong 500 B.C., Assistant to the Emperor of Yue, 11th Business Principle

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963):
“What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a co-operative business possessed of great wealth in which all citizens had a right to share…. Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result…. If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.
~ The Echo of Greece

On general principle

After all, everybody only hears what he understands.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German poet and philosopher

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein 1879-1955, German-born brilliant American theoretical physicist

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER, Civilization and Ethics, Preface.—The Philosophy of Civilization,

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
~Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

Funny, but true

In God we trust, all others bring data.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming 1900-1993, American Statistician

“What is the answer?” she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and said: “Then, what is the question?”

~GERTRUDE STEIN, last words,