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Tacitus

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Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.
--
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XXX, Section 2.

 
Tacitus

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The people love Nero. He inspires in them both affection and respect. There is a reason for this which Tacitus omits. One can discern the reason for this popular feeling: Nero oppressed the great and never burdened the ordinary people. But Tacitus says nothing of this. He speaks of crimes. He speaks of them with passion. We, as a result, feel he is biased; he no longer inspires the same confidence. One is lead to believe that he exaggerates; he explains nothing and appears satisfied with vignettes.

 
Nero (Emperor)
 

You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities?

 
Thomas Jefferson
 

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar — that I call an achievement.

 
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
 

The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. ... It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. ...
In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!

 
Julius Streicher
 

I could not think that GOD was poor, that He was short of resources, or unwilling to supply any want of whatever work was really His. It seemed to me that if there were lack of funds to carry on work, then to that degree, in that special development, or at that time, it could not be the work of GOD.

 
James Hudson Taylor
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