Policy

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. ___.

• Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
  • Francis Bacon, Essays, "Of Boldness."

• Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
  • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

• Like Æsop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, "Democritus to the Reader."

• They had best not stir the rice, though it sticks to the pot.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter XXXVII.

• It is better to walk than to run; it is better to stand than to walk; it is better to sit than to stand; it is better to lie than to sit.
  • Hindu proverb

• Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.
  • Philander Chase Johnson, Everybody's Magazine May 1920, p. 36.

• Masterly inactivity.
  • James Mackintosh, Vindiciæ Gallicæ. Probably from "Strenua inertia," Horace, Epistles XI. 28.

• When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
  • Charles Miner, Who'll turn Grindstones? Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe. In The Gleaner (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) (1811)

• The publick weal requires that a man should betray, and lye, and massacre.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, "Of Profit and Honesty"

• Turn him to any cause of policy,
  The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
  Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
  The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act I, Scene 1

• To beguile the time,
  Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
  Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
  But be the serpent under 't.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act I, Scene 5

• We shall not I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting.
  • Woodrow Wilson, Annual Message (December 2, 1913), alluding to Mexico.

• We have stood apart, studiously neutral.
  • Woodrow Wilson, Message to Congress (December 7, 1915)