Expedients Quotes

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof;

it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.

If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

Protection is not a principle but an expedient.

You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least;

and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them -- I can write in letters which make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system;

I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.

The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational.

If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

Government is at best but an expedient;

but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient. They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one's mind on the act and the doing of it, not one ones' relation to the act or its character or value... One should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquility of mind, realization, insight, and wisdom.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

It is our happiness to live under the government of a PRINCE who is satisfied with ruling according to law; as every other good prince will - We enjoy under his administration all the liberty that is proper and expedient for us.

Information is controlled because the free flow of truth is not always expedient for those wishing to maintain control.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people.

In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.