quotations about necessity
Freedom is only necessity understood.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Dilemma of Determinism"
Necessity -- thou best of peacemakers,
As well as surest prompter of invention.
WALTER SCOTT
Peveril of the Peak
Necessity often has a brow of despair.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Necessity inspires the fatal thought.
VITTORIO ALFIERI
Agamemnon
I don't think necessity is the mother of invention -- invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
An Autobiography
Necessity seeks bread where it is to be found.
SALIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity can turn any weapon to advantage.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Moral Sayings
Necessity's sharp pinch!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
When God will educate a man, he compels him to learn bitter lessons; He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations.
CELIA BURLEIGH
attributed, Holy Thoughts on Holy Things
I praise and love all men who do no sin willingly; but with necessity even the gods do not contend.
SIMONIDES OF CEOS
attributed, Protagoras
My steps have pressed the flowers,
That to the Muses' bowers
The eternal dews of Helicon have given:
And trod the mountain height,
Where Science, young and bright,
Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven.
Yet have I found no power to vie
With thine, severe necessity!
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK
"Necessity"
Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity.
EPICURUS
attributed, Letters, Principle Doctrines and Vatican Sayings
Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin and people die.
STEVEN ERIKSON
Midnight Tides
If necessity is the mother of invention, it is no less the mother of crime; eternal justice is one thing, eternal love of bread and butter and other good things another; where it is a necessity of our nature to have, it is a weakness of our being to get.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity is a strong rider with sharp spurs, who maketh the sorry jade do that which the strongest horse sometimes will not do.
CALANUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity is a good school.
AL-ANABARI
attributed, Day's Collacon
You fight when the necessity arises -- no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Necessity, like electricity,
Is in ourselves and all things, and no more
Without us than within us; and we live,
We of this mortal mixture, in the same law
As the pure colorless intelligence
Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
A people never fairly begins to prosper till necessity is treading on its heels.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and the Wayside
Necessity teaches wisdom, while prosperity makes fools.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine