quotations about necessity
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
DANIEL DEFOE
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe
Fear is the underminer of all determinations; and necessity the victorious rebel of all laws.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney
The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.
J. G. ZIMMERMAN
Aphorisms and Reflections on Men, Morals and Things
The rule of necessity is a rule of law which states that necessity knows no law.... So the rule of necessity overrides all other laws. It in fact allows one to do that which would normally be against the law.
ROBERT PATRICK
"Technically, we are still in a state of emergency", Victoria Advocate, July 28, 2017
A deed of necessity is not sinful.
C. C. GOETNER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention; but is the death of poetical.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those that submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will, and another thing to be tied up to do what we must.
ROGER L'ESTRANGE
Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections
He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.
SIMONE WEIL
"The Iliad or The Poem of Force"