eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2016-06-21

"No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself." -- attributed to William Penn (b. 1644-10-14, d. 1718-07-30), but none of the citations I've found identify the work or letter it's from and it's not on his Wikiquote page. Using it here anyhow on account of Trump.

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twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
posted by [personal profile] twistedchick at 04:00pm on 2016-06-21
Might be from one of his letters, as opposed to his published essays.
eftychia: Photo of clouds shaped like an eye and arched eyebrow (sky-eye)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:42pm on 2016-06-21
I'm hoping that's it -- unlike some folks, like Thomas Jefferson for example, I didn't see a lot of quotations cited as "letter to so-and-so, {year}", nor a collection of full texts of letters. But I didn't think to Google "William Penn letters", so maybe it's all out there somewhere. Thing is, it's one of those lines that sounds right, but also sounds like the kind of thing soebody would make up and attribute later, or forget where they heard it and go, "well it sounds kinda like Penn...". (Like the famous not-actually-Voltaire quote.)

Actually, I think I care less about whether Penn said it than about knowing for sure who said it, whoever that is. But it would be a litte less messy if the many, many sites attributing it to him turn out to be right.

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