Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Citizen of the World. Vol. 2, J. Newbery, 1762, p. 115.
The phrase was used without attribution by President Jimmy Carter in his national address on the energy crisis, April 18, 1977
The Lebanese Prime Minister had been assassinated with most Lebanese thinking that the Syrians were behind the murder. All the political parties in Lebanon called for a UN Tribunal to investigate the assassination. As the Tribunal was ending its investigation, word leaked out that the report would name Lebanese Hezbollah operatives as being involved in the assassination. If that happened, the Lebanese government and army would have the obligation to arrest the murders for trial and Lebanon would be split against Hezbollah which was the most powerful and militant political group as well as being a terrorist group. Hezbollah declared that they would not allow any arrests of their people, and that they wanted the Government, led by the murdered politicians son to repudiate the UN Tribunal even before the report was issued. When that failed, Hezbollah withdrew from the government coalition and reconstituted a government without the son of the murdered Prime Minister who was then thrown out of office. Jumblatt’s Druze party held the balance of power and surprisingly sided with Hezbollah. Usually he was a strong advocate for justice. However, if he refused to go along with Hezbollah, they would use their terror troops against the Lebanese army and civil war would result. Hence Jumblat’s answer—a classic statement of a political dilemma.
Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).
