This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility." - Lord Fisher, aka Lord John Arbutnoth Fisher, fully Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone
"Everything morally right derives from one of four sources: it concerns either full perception or intelligent development of what is true; or the preservation of organized society, where every man is rendered his due and all his obligations are faithfully discharged; or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit; or order and moderation in everything said and done, whereby there is temperance and self-control." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"I judge moderation to be the greatest virtue." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquillity." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom." - Plato NULL
"For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge, such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom." - Plato NULL
"Moderation is the silken-string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues." - Thomas Fuller
"Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues." - Thomas Fuller
"Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness: ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any." - Thucydides NULL
"Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature. Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. With medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater
"The principle of self-interest rightly understood produces no great acts of self-sacrificed, but it suggest daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of person sin habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and if it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their habits. If the principle of interest rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world, extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I think that gross depravity would then also be less common. The principle of interest rightly understood perhaps prevents men from rising far above the level of mankind, but a great number of other men, who were falling far below it, are caught and restrained by it." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Pride is a reaction formation to the feeling of inferiority, of the experience of powerlessness, of not being worthy enough of love. Only anxiety compels a person to lose moderation and to want to be more than he is. Out of fear of being an animal, he has to become an angel. Out of fear of being a nothing, a god. Anxiety never allows him to be simply a man." - Eugen Drewermann
"Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind. " - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result." - Herbert Spencer
"The moderation and toleration of the priests of any sect are in an inverse ratio to its authority and power." - Isidore van Cleef
"Only actions give life its strength, as only moderation gives it its charm." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters." - Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome
"At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear lest the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight which nature drags along.Let us not say to ourselves that the best truth always lies in moderation, in the decent average. This would perhaps be so if the majority of men did not think on a much lower plane than is needful. That is why it behooves others to think and hope on a higher plane than seems reasonable. The average, the decent moderation of today, will be the least human of things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the other good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.Let us think of the great invisible ship that carries our human destinies upon eternity. Like the vessels of our confined oceans, she has her sails and her ballast. The fear that she may pitch or roll on leaving the roadstead is no reason for increasing the weight of the ballast by stowing the fair white sails in the depths of the hold. Sails were not woven to molder side by side with cobblestones in the dark. Ballast exists everywhere; all the pebbles of the harbor, all the sand of the beach, will serve for that. But sails are rare and precious things; their place is not in the murk of the well, but amid the light of the tall masts, where they will collect the winds of space." -
"One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver." - Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"A really great man is known by three signs - generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success." - Otto von Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg
"The three signs of great men are generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success." - Otto von Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg
"If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange... they all consider death a great evil... and the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils... therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except for philosophers. yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice...what of the moderate among them? is their experience not similar?... they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others... I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom. " - Plato NULL
"Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes. " - Prince Metternich, fully Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich
"The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement." - Robertson Davies
"Venerable Brothers, Mother Church rejoices that by the singular gift of Divine Providence, the long awaited day has finally dawned. Here at St Peter’s tomb, under the auspices of the Virgin Mother of God... the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is solemnly opened... ‘The greatest concern of the ecumenical Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more effectively. That doctrine embraces the whole of man, body and soul. And since man is a pilgrim on this earth, it commands him to move steadily towards heaven... it is necessary that the Church should never depart from the sacred treasure of the truth inherited from the fathers. But at the same time, she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life in the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate... ‘The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, but the way in which it is presented is another." - Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
"We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
"The divine Instructor is trustworthy, adorned as He is with three of the fairest ornament-knowledge, benevolence, and authority of utterance: with knowledge, for He is the paternal wisdom: 'All Wisdom is from the Lord, and with Him for evermore;' with authority of utterance, for He is God and Creator: 'For all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made;' and with benevolence, for He alone gave Himself a sacrifice for us." - Clement of Alexandria, originally Titus Flavius Clemens NULL
"One of the most arrogant undertakings, to my mind, is to write the biography of a man which pretends to go beyond external facts and gives the inmost motives. One of the most mendacious is autobiography." - Theodor Haecker
"I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought." - Thomas Carlyle
"It is not wisdom alone but public confidence in that wisdom which can support an administration." - Thomas Jefferson
"The morals spoil more easily they recover." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"You are convinced by experience that very few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought." - Thucydides NULL
"O credulity, thou hast as many ears as fame has tongues, open to every sound of truth as of falsehood." - William Havard
"God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of coercion." - William Matthews
"The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility." - Lord Fisher, aka Lord John Arbutnoth Fisher, fully Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone
"Everything morally right derives from one of four sources: it concerns either full perception or intelligent development of what is true; or the preservation of organized society, where every man is rendered his due and all his obligations are faithfully discharged; or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit; or order and moderation in everything said and done, whereby there is temperance and self-control." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"I judge moderation to be the greatest virtue." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness: ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any." - Thucydides NULL
"Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature. Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. With medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater
"Pride is a reaction formation to the feeling of inferiority, of the experience of powerlessness, of not being worthy enough of love. Only anxiety compels a person to lose moderation and to want to be more than he is. Out of fear of being an animal, he has to become an angel. Out of fear of being a nothing, a god. Anxiety never allows him to be simply a man." - Eugen Drewermann
"Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind. " - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg