Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. -Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)

Billings must have a different definition of conscience, or perhaps of reason, because conscience is simply reason properly formed and applied to moral issues, and therefore is prone to mistakes as reason is when applied to other matters.

Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

I agree with this idea, but I think it misuses the word judge. Judging is a necessary, almost unavoidable action of reason. What Frankl means really is that no one should condemn, or judge negatively, without judging himself by the same standard first.

William Shakespeare

This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. -William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616)

Attributing this thought to Shakespeare is a bit misleading, since these are words put into Polonius's mouth in Hamlet. He is not portrayed in the play as a trustworthy fount of wisdom but rather is generally regarded as being wrong in every judgment he makes. Certainly his last action, which precipitates the final tragedy, is catastrophic. In general, it is tricky to quote from Shakespeare's plays, or really from any work of fiction.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

In our post modern age, this seems no longer to be true. Some seem to be able to wear numerous different faces without going mad, perhaps because the question of which is the "true" identity doesn't arise in their minds. Any question about truth, after all, is not considered a valid question.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

"I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is always good to remember that you do not know what you do not know, including the (unknown) vast range of unknown.

David Grayson, journalist and author (1870-1946)

The sense of wishing to be known only for what one really is is like putting on an old, easy, comfortable garment. You are no longer afraid of anybody or anything. You say to yourself, 'Here I am --- just so ugly, dull, poor, beautiful, rich, interesting, amusing, ridiculous -- take me or leave me.' And how absolutely beautiful it is to be doing only what lies within your own capabilities and is part of your own nature. It is like a great burden rolled off a man's back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own. -David Grayson, journalist and author (1870-1946)

It is sad to think that this frame of mind is something one aspires to put on rather than one's normal reality, but it seems that in our post-modern age the false front, or an assortment of them, is the new normal.