Jonathan Swift Quotes
Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
Swift, Jonathan. "A Tale of a Tub." The Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. 11, edited by Sir Walter Scott, Archibald Constable and Co., 1824, p. 66.
This saying symbolized Spain’s resistance to Enlightenment ideals and its strong dependence on Catholicism.
1st Marquees of Halifax. This is a very important quotation because it still has much validity today. The “Prince” is the Monarch, King or Official Heading the State. Savile points out that if the Price does not take the time or make the effort to understand an issue and its complexity, he then must trust his advisors and their opinions rather than have any intelligent and knowledgeable views of his own. In modern times the advice applies to elected officials, executive and legislative. If they do not take time and make the effort to understand a complex issue, they cannot use their own judgment but must accept the judgment of staff, friends, colleagues, party leaders, lobbyists or members of committees who they hope are not also ignorant. In modern legislatures, there are so many different issues in so many areas, that it is very difficult to have the time to make the effort to study all the issues. This problem is compounded with politicians as they tend to spend large amounts of their time fundraising for their next election and simply do not have enough time to study issues. In the Congress for example, most members vote on bills that they have not even read and they end up trusting someone else’s judgment.
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".
