Famous quotes containing the words general, population and/or prefer:
“We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration.... But the examination can be only carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same as to know it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Men look on knowledge which they learn—or might learn—from others as they do on the most beautiful structures which are not their own: in outward objects, they would rather behold their own hogsty than their neighbor’s palace; and in mental ones, would prefer one grain of knowledge gained by their own observation to all the wisdom of a thousand Solomons.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)