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“Law is reason without desire.”
Good law is idealized as judgment governed by reason rather than by the changing appetites or personal passions of an individual ruler.
Source note: Politics, Book III, William Ellis translation; the line appears in a discussion of law and political rule.
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“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.”
Paine distinguishes voluntary social cooperation from coercive government, treating political authority as a tool justified by necessity rather than an intrinsic good.
Source note: Common Sense, section on the origin and design of government; the passage contrasts society’s constructive role with government’s restraining function.
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“Society in equality is its normal state.”
Mill contrasts relations organized around command and obedience with equal association, presenting equality as the normal direction of an improving society.
Source note: The Subjection of Women, discussion of marriage and moral cultivation; the sentence follows Mill’s contrast between older command-and-obedience relations and society among equals.
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“Nothing noble can be performed without danger.”
Avoiding every danger can also prevent worthy action; prudence needs to distinguish reckless exposure from risks that meaningful conduct sometimes requires.
Source note: Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Charles Cotton translation, in a discussion of distrust, security, and princely conduct.
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“Every action and moral choice, aims, it is thought, at some good.”
Actions and choices are intelligible because they pursue something taken to be good, even when people disagree about what the good actually is.
Source note: Nicomachean Ethics, Book I; the opening argument begins from the idea that action aims at a perceived good.
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“The thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a risk.”
Choosing among plausible interpretations necessarily involves uncertainty, so sound thinking requires a cautious selection that remains open to confirmation or correction by later events.
Source note: How We Think, Chapter VIII. The sentence concerns choosing the idea or principle relevant to a perplexing situation; the next clause says the prudent thinker selects warily, subject to later confirmation or frustration.