Jonathan Swift Quotes


Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.


Citations

Swift, Jonathan. The Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man. 1708.

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Mehmet’s father Murat had just died. There was a custom in Islam that the new Sultan have all his brothers executed so that there would be absolute certainty who was the legitimate Sultan and that dissenting forces should not rally around another son of the old Sultan to have a regime change and/or a civil war. Stability and certainty in the line of succession was critical to the Muslims in that the Sultan was not only the civil ruler, but the highest religious authority as well. He had the power of the Christian Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor together. The struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites which has overwhelmed Islamic unity was originally all about who the successor to Muhammad would be.


Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
  • Born: November 30, 1667
  • Died: October 19, 1745
  • Nationality: Irish
  • Profession: Writer

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".