#reconsideration — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

WIST Quotations @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 23:43 UTC

The senate has a standing rule never to discuss a matter on the same day when it was first introduced; all new business is deferred to the next meeting. They do this so that a man will not blurt out the first thought that occurs to him, and then devote all his energies to defending those foolish impulses, instead of considering impartially the public good. They know that some men would rather jeopardize the welfare of the state than admit to having been heedless and shortsighted — so perverse and preposterous is their sense of pride. They should have had enough foresight at the beginning to speak with prudence rather than haste.

[Quin id quoque moris habet senatus, ut nihil, quo die primum proponitur, eodem disputetur. sed in sequentem senatum differatur, ne quis ubi quod in buccam primum uenerit, temere effutierit, ea potius excogitet postea, quibus decreta tueatur sua, quam quae ex reipublicae usu sint. malitque salutis publicae, quam opinionis de se iacturam facere, peruerso quodam ac praepostero pudore, ne initio parum prospexisse uideatur. Cui prospiciendum initio fuit, ut consulto potius, quam cito loqueretur.]

Thomas More (1478-1535) English lawyer, social philosopher, statesman, humanist, Christian martyr
Utopia, Book 2, ch. 3 “Of Their Magistrates” (1518 ed.) [tr. Adams (1992 ed.)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/more-thomas/85255/

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WIST Quotations @[email protected] · 2026-03-10 · 18:48 UTC

A quotation from A. A. Milne

I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking. With equal truth it may be said that a first-rate mind is not one which does not remember the past, nor is it one which cannot forget the past; it is a mind which will use the past but not be ordered by it. It is a mind independent of everybody and everything but the facts in front of it. It is as little perturbed to find itself sharing a thought with the simple as it is elated to find itself sharing a thought with the subtle.

A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
War with Honour, Macmillan War Pamphlets, Issue 2 (1940)

More about this quote: wist.info/milne-a-a/82636/

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