Polite Quotes (9 quotes)
An insolent reply from a polite person is a bad sign.
Prorrhetic, in Hippocrates, trans. P. Potter (1995), Vol. 8, 181.
Anyone who thinks we can continue to have world wars but make them nice polite affairs by outlawing this weapon or that should meditate upon the outlawing of the cross-bow by Papal authority. Setting up the machinery for international law and order must surely precede disarmament. The Wild West did not abandon its shooting irons till after sheriffs and courts were established.
Speech, American Library Assiciation Conference (3 Jul 1947), as quoted by Lawrence E. Davies in 'Army's Atomic Bid Viewed in Making', New York Times (4 Jul 1947), 11.
Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare.
He turned away at once;
Far too polite to stare.
Has looked on Beauty bare.
He turned away at once;
Far too polite to stare.
Parody after Edna St. Vincent Millay. In The Mathematical Intelligencer (Fall 1994), 16, No. 4, 20.
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of “touching” a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
From 'Charles II', Twelve Types (1906), 98.
The common people say, that physicians are the class of people who kill other men in the most polite and courteous manner.
…...
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.
In The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946, 2006), 2.
The numbers are a catalyst that can help turn raving madmen into polite humans.
Excerpt from address by Davis to a scientific society, 'The Philadelphia Story' collected in Philip Davis and William G. Chinn, 3.146 and All That (1985), 64. The context is the result of a "take a number" ticket used to organize a train station crowd competing for available taxis. Instead of chaos from queue jumping, the dispatcher used the ticket numbers for the loading order as each taxi pulled up.
The power that produced Man when the monkey was not up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if Man does not come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be saved, Man must save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he should be saved. He is by no means an ideal creature. At his present best many of his ways are so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in polite society, and so painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain is often a good. Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try another experiment.
Back to Methuselah: a Metabiological Pentateuch (1921), xvii.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
Essays, on Miscellaneous Subjects (1818), 198.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
