Sunday, June 20

Another deliberate misquotation

As I have admitted before, I am addicted to epigrams. I sometimes say something like "every failure arises from an excess of one's own first principle."

The correct quote, from Lord Acton, is actually:
Every institution finally perishes by an excess of its own first principle.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

However, the way I recall you typically paraphrasing the epigram was as follows: "Every organization eventually dies of an excess of its own first principle."
Which is a pretty good paraphrase, I think (and one that I've made use of from time to time).
-Frank J.