Carlyle says understanding the present includes asking what the present situation requires people to do, joining interpretation of one’s time with practical judgment.
Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. I “The Present Time”; Project Gutenberg #1140. The excerpt completes Carlyle’s sentence about knowing the present time and what it bids people do; the local political context remains essential.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Accurate understanding of both one’s own capabilities and the opposing side reduces avoidable strategic surprise and miscalculation.
The Art of War, Chapter III “Attack by Stratagem,” section 18, Lionel Giles translation (1910), beginning on printed page 24 / scan leaf 80 and continuing onto printed page 25 / scan leaf 81 in the original Giles edition on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #17405. The enemy/self-knowledge sentence closes Chapter III’s discussion of conditions for victory and remains translation-mediated military strategy rather than a modern psychological or self-help claim.
“I may be wrong.”
The admission places a limit on Washington’s own policy claims and models intellectual uncertainty rather than presenting judgment as infallible.
The Future of the American Negro, Chapter VIII; Project Gutenberg #26507. The sentence appears in Washington’s closing policy discussion immediately after his summary of dangers and immediately before his qualification that he may also be in some degree right.
“The future is yet to come”
The brief phrase anchors Hazlitt’s argument that the future does not possess greater reality merely because it has not happened yet; he compares its status with the already completed past.
Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.
“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.
Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.
“All men by nature desire to know.”
Aristotle treats the desire for knowledge as a basic human tendency, giving curiosity a foundational place in the movement from perception toward understanding.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter I, W. D. Ross translation (1908), validated Wikisource scan leaf 21. 'All men by nature desire to know' opens the work before the discussion of sensation, memory, experience, art and knowledge. This remains ancient philosophy mediated by translation, not a modern empirical finding about cognition.
“All warfare is based on deception.”
Strategy depends partly on managing what an opponent believes about intentions, strength, timing, and position rather than revealing every fact directly.
The Art of War, Chapter I 'Laying Plans,' section 18, Lionel Giles translation (1910), original scan leaf 62. 'All warfare is based on deception' begins Giles's section 18 before the examples of seeming unable, inactive, near or far. This remains translation-mediated ancient military strategy, not generic business, relationship or current operational advice.
