Quote

Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.

Lin Yutang

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Peace
Policemen
Inspirational
Lawyers
Many
Soldiers
Lawyer
Soldier
Motivational
Liberty
Justice

More quotes by Lin Yutang

Image
A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.
Lin Yutang
Image
Art is both creation and recreation.
Lin Yutang
Image
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
Lin Yutang
Image
China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
Lin Yutang
Image
Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.
Lin Yutang
Image
Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.
Lin Yutang
Image
Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.
Lin Yutang
Image
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
Image
To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.
Lin Yutang
Image
Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
Lin Yutang
Image
The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.
Lin Yutang
Image
However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.
Lin Yutang
Image
Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us.
Lin Yutang
Image
Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
Lin Yutang
Image
The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
Lin Yutang
Image
There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.
Lin Yutang
Image
I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
Lin Yutang
Image
The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.
Lin Yutang
Image
All human happiness is sensuous happiness.
Lin Yutang
Image
No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.
Lin Yutang