Maxims*

*Not found in the Bible, but helpful to achieving the biblical goal of leading a wise and righteous life. They are listed with the oldest sources first.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

– John Adams (1735-1826)

“Simplify.”

– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton aka John Dalberg (1834-1902)

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

“For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935)

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

– G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)