Man is a wolf to man. Really?
● This aphorism borrowed from Plautus, was made famous by Hobbes, who made one of the postulates of his essay Leviathan (1651): the state of nature is for men state of "war of all against all" . The problem is that this radical pessimism is a betrayal of the thought of Plautus, who told the character of his comedy: " Man is a wolf to man , not a man, when he does not know who he is dealing. " Supplement " when he does not know who he is dealing " relativized because clearly the original proposal ...
In the realm of quotations, it should therefore be cautious. This example is one of those who deserved some correction in the book Cultural references which I announced the new edition in June 2010. Here are a dozen others:
● The very wise maxim Help Yourself, Heaven help you is not a word in the Gospel of Christ but of Hercules in the fable of La Fontaine " The Chartier stuck. " ●
Descartes borrowed its I think therefore I am to St. Augustine who wrote (more subtly): If I'm wrong, [is that] I'm .
● The famous precept of F. Bacon can not command nature except by obeying her decal the Latin proverb A virtuous woman to control her husband by obeying . ●
Voltaire never wrote: I do not agree with your ideas but I will defend to the end so you can express them. It is a known fake.
● It is also in error as it prepared to Marie Antoinette formula If they have no bread, let them eat cake. It was known well before the Revolution.
● If Montesquieu wrote The best is the mortal enemy of the good ... he immediately deleted the sentence that was excessive!
● Alfred de Musset is the author of the axiom Great artists have no country ... that Marx applied subsequently to proletarians.
● The precept Politics is the art of the possible neither of Gambetta or Richelieu, but Bismarck, who said more accurately policy is the art of possible ... which is not the same thing!
● This is the Swedish educator Ellen Key is at the origin (almost word for word) of the aphorism Culture is what remains when one has forgotten everything . It is attributed wrongly Edouard Herriot, who said she came from yet another writer ...
● Simone de Beauvoir and Louis Aragon shameless pastiche writers who have preceded them, since Tristan Bernard was published in 1899 a story titled Memoirs of a young man ranked and Francis Ponge wrote in 1944 Man is the future of man ...
● When Churchill declared: Democracy is the worst regimes except all other it draws directly from the Brazilian Ruy Barbosa, who said: The worst democracy is far better than the best dictatorship.
● Gramsci is credited with the idea that one must combine optimism of the will to pessimism of the intellect . In Indeed, Gramsci cites his friend Romain Rolland, whom he borrowed the antithesis.
● When he said: must give it time , Mitterrand quoted a proverb secular, attested since the 17th century, which he was wrongly attributed the authorship. ● It is finally
Laurent Fabius, about some elections, had the word: I think sometimes, when I shave . Nicolas Sarkozy did that stand out the form stating that he was thinking all the time. That was in 2003 ...
This is just a sample!
BH
