„It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.“

Quelle: Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure

Quelle: The Gay Science

Quelle: Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831), Chapter 10.

Quelle: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

[Mahmoud al-Zahar, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041602899.html, No Peace Without Hamas, Washington Post, April 17, 2008, February 25, 2014]

Letter to http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110158)) Thomas Leiper (12 June 1815). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 477–478.
The sentence "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be." was used by US-President Barack Obama in his A New Beginning Speech.
1810s
Kontext: We concur in considering the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. [... ] Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England, and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future, to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.

Quelle: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 10.

As quoted in Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (New Edition) by John Emsley (page 266)

Section 33
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Quelle: The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage

Quelle: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 45.

As quoted in The Cheka : Lenin's Political Police (1981) by George Leggett, p. 54

Quelle: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 222
Kontext: There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.

Oprah Magazine (2004)