I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.
Abraham LincolnRelated topics
argument authority bound case clear discard experience follow great improvement mean question should stand supplant whateverRelated quotes
For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism. Is there any evidence from the past that institutionalizing sects and ethnic grievances would ensure a nation's security, prosperity, and freedom? America's melting pot is history's sole exception of e pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language, and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt...
Victor Davis Hanson
It is our endeavour to remove all kinds of divides-those between the high and low, touchables and untouchables-as well as other aspects of discrimination which have filled people's hearts with conflicts and divided the entire humanity into fragments...Rishi Valmiki taught us that in order to make progress in society, you have to take along Shabari with you; if you want your society to progress, you have to ensure that even vanars stand by you. If you want to move ahead, you have to embrace Kevat. ...We have come together at this place to express our commitment to follow his message.
Narendra Modi
It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion - whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government - at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.
Frédéric Bastiat
Multiple discoveries are in fact very common in science and for much the same reason. Developments in related fields with different motivation help one to understand a difficult problem better. Since these developments are public knowledge, many scholars can take advantage of them. It is pleasant to the ego to be first or among the first with a new discovery. However, in this case at least, the evidence is clear that the development of general equilibrium theory would have gone on quite as it did without me.
Kenneth Arrow
Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service, [...] We have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent war from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. That is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce.
Margaret Mead