Daniel Defoe Quotes

Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims - as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force - he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious: reason, to him, is a means of deception

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

Most people judge men by their success or their good fortune.

Oh, wise young judge.

The Law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent; it has no kind of fault or flaw and I, my Lords, embody the Law.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

I am not here to judge whether people are locked in poverty because of themselves or because of the society in which they live. All I know is that they are there and we are trying to do something about it.

The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.

There will be no end to the troubles of states,Or of humanity itself,Till philosophers become kings in this world,Or till those we now call kings and rulers really And truly become philosophers

If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.

The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.

Don't judge me, you could be me in another life.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.

There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.

If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.

We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

Punishment is God's. He alone is the infallible Judge.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.