#caution

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#change #politics #change

We must substitute courage for caution. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#courage #courage

(about William Blake) [Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death." And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral." But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All! ↗

— Brenda Ueland

#creativity #faith #freedom #art

Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution. ↗

— Erin McCarthy

#character #maturity #scars #maturity

We had a single find of BSE in this country. And we believe that what we're doing is appropriate action taken in an abundance of caution under the circumstances. And I believe it's the right thing to do. ↗

— Ann Veneman

#action #appropriate #believe #bse #caution

Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs. ↗

— Tom Waits

#goodbye #most #road #songs #tales

As far as I know, the most conservative estimates of the number of Americans who would be killed in a major nuclear attack, with everything working as well as can be hoped and all foreseeable precautions taken, run to about fifty million. ↗

— George Wald

#as far as #attack #conservative #estimates #everything

In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels. ↗

— Gerald Clarke

#causes #caution #channels #memoirs #much

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. ↗

— William James

#behalf #caution #certain #errors #excessive

The scars of others should teach us caution. ↗

— St. Jerome

#others #scars #should #teach #us