Top 100 Maxim Quotes
#1. The maxim of "Four legs good, two legs bad," which ultimately serves as a controlling device, arises because of the ignorance of the working animals. Its simplicity allows it to be easily altered and manipulated.
Shmoop
#2. Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#4. Here is one of the best means to acquire humility; fix well in mind this maxim: One is as much as he is in the sight of God, and no more.
Francis Of Assisi
#5. If each man, on hearing a wise maxim, immediately looked to see how it properly applied to him, he would find that it was not so much a pithy saying as a whiplash applied to the habitual stupidity of his faculty of judgement.
Michel De Montaigne
#6. It is a maxim received in life that, in general, we can determine more wisely for others than for ourselves. The reason of it is so dear in argument that it hardly wants the confirmation of experience.
Junius
#7. It is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself.
Richard Bentley
#8. A lifelong disciple of Lord Chesterfield's maxim that a gentleman was free to do anything he pleased as long as he did it with style.
Joseph J. Ellis
#9. Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.
Margaret Fuller
#10. The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
William James
#11. As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.
James Madison
#13. I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.
Lord Acton
#14. When educating horses there is no greater maxim than slow is fast and fast is slow.
Monty Roberts
#15. Why the hell did she have to look like a centerfold piece for Maxim magazine? Who was she trying to impress? She already had him: hook, line, and sinker.
Em Wolf
#16. Nietzsche has a very significant maxim. He says a tree that longs to reach the heights of heaven must sink its roots to the bottom of the earth.
Osho
#17. Not using that handy maxim a man is what he makes his dough at and alas how much. Sometimes it is a gentle gesture to remind people of their big time possibilities. Makes them like you.
J.P. Donleavy
#18. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
#19. The simple, brief experience of imagining oneself as another transformed both self-perception and, through this transformation, behavior. The maxim "fake it till you make it" gains empirical support.
Cordelia Fine
#21. The highest ideal man can form of his own powers, is that which he is destined to attain. Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain. This is the law and the prophets. Knock and it shall be opened, seek and ye shall find. It is demonstrated; it is a maxim.
Margaret Fuller
#22. All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith
#23. Find 'em hot, leave 'em wet," he murmured.
"Well known firefighter maxim.
Kate Meader
#24. My maxim is always this,' he once told a student, 'consider every step carefully in advance, but then, if you believe you can take responsibility for it, let nothing stop you.
Manjit Kumar
#25. There's an old maxim that says, 'Things that work persist,' which is why there's still Cobol floating around.
Vint Cerf
#26. Mr. Lincoln's maxim and philosophy were: 'What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.' He never joined any Church. He was a religious man always, I think, but was not a technical Christian.
Mary Todd Lincoln
#27. I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#28. The maxim of the famous Spartan nurses: never expose a small child to fear, let him enter confidently on boyhood.
Mary Renault
#30. It is a maxim, founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.
George Washington
#31. Never lose sight of this maxim, that you should establish your cantonments at the most distant and best protected point from the enemy, especially where a surprise is possible. By this means you will have time to unite all your forces before he can attack you.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#32. Once I find the right maxim to apply, I feel that I have done all that can be expected of me.
Mason Cooley
#33. Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#34. CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."
Ambrose Bierce
#35. My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune and change my desires rather than changing how things stand in the world.
Rene Descartes
#36. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.
Maximilien Robespierre
#37. ...[T]o be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may often be very advantageous to me, although to abide by it is certainly safer.
Immanuel Kant
#38. Besides, it was a well-known maxim that maniacs must be humoured.
Georgette Heyer
#39. You can do almost anything if you put your mind to it. Be it the perfect murder, robbing a bank or owning your own company. I don't go along with Prince Charles' maxim that everyone should know their place and limitations.
Stephen Richards
#40. It is a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that nothing must be done too late; and again, that everything must be done at its proper season; while there is a third precept which reminds us that opportunities lost can never be regained.
Pliny The Elder
#41. It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.
Samuel Johnson
#42. If I have lived by any maxim as a reporter, it was that every person is an expert on the circumstances of his life.
Joseph Lelyveld
#43. [I]n the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained.
James Madison
#44. Maxim's voice, clear and strong, Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.
Daphne Du Maurier
#45. I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was impossible for me to execute myself
Baron De Montesquieu
#46. In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches
- do the right thing, for the right reason
- no exception exists that says: unless there's criticism or risk. Damn the consequences.
Josh Rushing
#47. I have always laid it down as a maxim -and found it justified by experience -that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex -but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other.
Lord Byron
#48. Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me
Napoleon Bonaparte
#49. The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.
Bertrand Russell
#50. Paris is great. I stay at the Ritz Paris - I'm good friends with the Director, Frank Klein, and the owner. I lived there 3 years; I was the only foreigner working at Maxim's. They only took French, which was a mistake.
Sirio Maccioni
#51. Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#52. Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.
Arthur Helps
#53. Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#54. Maximum return was the maxim to which we returned.
Mohsin Hamid
#55. There's a lot more to being a woman than being 18 years old on the cover of Maxim magazine.
Beth Broderick
#56. What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.
Mark Twain
#57. We should take as a maxim never to be surprised at current difficulties, no more than at a passing breeze, because with a little patience we shall see them disappear. Time changes everything.
Vincent De Paul
#58. There is a simple maxim that I use to express this situation, 'when tolerance becomes a one way street, it leads to cultural suicide.'
Allen West
#59. Those who rule us have brilliantly applied the maxim that the best defense against truth is the unswerving repetition of lies.
Leo Bersani
#60. The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority ... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#61. It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#62. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.
George Washington
#63. We should not forget Adam Smith's perspicuous observation that the "masters of mankind" - in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England - never cease to pursue their "vile maxim": "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people.
Noam Chomsky
#64. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
James Madison
#65. In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.
Maxim Gorky
#66. Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.
Honore De Balzac
#67. Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure/A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.
Anne Bradstreet
#68. There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#69. I happen to know what family you come from, although I know I'm not supposed to know, and I'm certain you can manufacture proof of anything you want."
"That's true. I can. But I didn't."
-Airiana & Maxim
Christine Feehan
#70. What you don't know won't hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don't know can hurt you very much.
Margaret Atwood
#71. It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
Jonathan Swift
#72. Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#73. I don't normally do shoots in bikinis - I'm just not that kind of girl. But for 'Maxim' I was like, 'Bring it on!' I wanted to wear the higher heels and the skimpier bathing suit. I figured I'd go for it!
Krysten Ritter
#74. It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy
Edward Gibbon
#75. In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner.
Richard John Neuhaus
#76. There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads 'He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End'.
Eoin Colfer
#77. Nobody was to be trusted. The plan that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.
Frances Hardinge
#78. In short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informationsof others.
Lord Chesterfield
#79. Once in Persia reigned a king
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which if held before the eyes
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they:
"Even this shall pass away."
Theodore Tilton
#80. The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
Thomas Babington Macaulay
#81. In general I esteem it a good maxim, that the best way to preserve the confidence of the people durably is to promote their true interest
George Washington
#82. Do what you believe to be right, and ever hold it for a maxim, that if the skies fall through your doing right, honest men will survive the ruin.
Charles Spurgeon
#83. And yes, I confess, when I looked at him, I thought of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester and Maxim de Winter ... and how could I not, when I had been waiting for them to step out of the pages of the books I loved; when I knew them so well, read them inside out and into myself?
Justine Picardie
#84. For my own part, I adhere to the maxim of antiquity, that the throne is a glorious sepulchre.
Theodora
#85. The truth of the maxim that beauty lies between the extremities of order and complexity.
Alain De Botton
#86. A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
Jonathan Swift
#87. Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness.
Rick Perlstein
#88. Remember this maxim: When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. The way you perceive things is an extremely powerful tool that will allow you to fully bring the power of intention into your life.
Wayne Dyer
#89. Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and "My country never wrong" is an even more dangerous maxim than "My country, right or wrong."
Bertrand Russell
#90. When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.
Charles Caleb Colton
#91. Damn it, woman," he snapped. "Stop crying. Are you hysterical?"
"Maybe." Her voice was muffled by the pillow and her hands.
-Maxim & Airiana
Christine Feehan
#92. To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim
Thomas Paine
#93. When we attempt to clear up the mess others have made, or when we love the unlovely, we demonstrate the kind of weirdness God likes. We give the lie to the evolutionary survival of the fittest maxim ...
Ann Benton
#94. I am just a hard-working 23-year-old. When Maxim asked me to be on their cover, I was quite surprised. Of course, I was happy about it.
Priyanka Chopra
#95. Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].
Christopher Hitchens
#96. The whole sum and substance of human history may be reduced to this maxim: that when man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss.
Theodore Parker
#97. I'm now more about romantic beauty. The dominatrix thing is over. You never look as good in person as you do in 'Maxim,' but it's fun. It's all like a fantasy.
Julianna Guill
#98. Lucretius' maxim: 'Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not.
Irvin D. Yalom
#99. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared - this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#100. ...Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being.
Immanuel Kant
