I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.
quote by Clara Barton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Hoary Precedent
Mr. Pericles, M.P.,
In four-sixty-nine B.C.,
Outed Cimon at a general election;
Premier Cimon, thuswise ex-ed,
Was quite naturally vexed,
And he made an angry speech in this connection;
He remarked, in peroration, as he grabbed his coat and hat,
'You're a Socialist, you rotter! You'd no precedent for that!'
Mr. Pericles is dead
Thoroughly, I've heard it said
And his words and acts may now be safely quoted
By our statesmen eminent,
Who on mouldy precedent
(If it's old enough and dead enough) have doted.
For precedent, I'd have you note, is most peculiar stuff;
It's absolutely useless if it isn't dead enough.
In my youth I ever held
Grave respect for all the eld,
And I found in history a strong attraction.
So, whene'er a scheme I planned,
Eagerly the tomes I scanned
That I might find precedent for ev'ry action.
Yet, despite my zealous labour, and the piles of books I read,
In the things that truly mattered I seemed not to forge ahead.
As I nursed my bulging brow,
Said I, 'This is wrong somehow.
Precedent, as we all know, is something holy
Something we should not neglect
To regard with great respect,
And I feel I'm safe in following it solely.
But had we done it from the start - I grasp, at least, this much
We would still be munching apples that we didn't oughter touch.
'Well, this problem is immense!'
In my experience
I reflected. 'How have we progressed, I wonder?'
Then the obvious reply
Hit me squarely in the eye:
It is by ignoring precedent, by thunder!
'Tis men who fix the precedents that lead the nations on
And not the folk who pin their faith to leaders dead and gone.
Mr. Pericles, M.P.,
You're the sort of man for me
(Though I understand you are a Dago alien):
'Spite your moral character,
O'er the Styx I greet you, sir,
You're the sort we need to-day in things Australian.
For we're moved to ask the question of our statesmen now and then:
'Does this job of fixing precedents belong to ancient men?'
Mr. Pericles, deceased,
'Spite his deadness, has increased
My respect for all the world's originators.
If we must have precedents,
My ideal he represents,
For I'm done with copyists and imitators.
And, after this, my reference is Pericles, M.P.,
He acted without precedent; that's precedent for me.
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
quote by Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
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Google is in an amazing position to be the target of tons of lawsuits that will set precedent for many important things for us on the Internet.
quote by Joichi Ito
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Dangerous Precedent
Children are failing at an alarming rate,
In public schools.
They can neither read nor write.
Quote or recite,
Anything...
From approved and acceptable literature.
However,
They do excel and achieve high marks...
At rapping and the playing of video games.
This reality is not 'becoming' a threat.
This reality IS and has been a threat,
To anyone who can see...
What the future ahead is going to be.
And the defending of this IS and has been...
A sick reflection of one's addiction to delusion.
For anyone to perceive themselves,
To be intelligent enough to say
Such freedoms to prevent,
The continued demoralizing decay
Should have such freedoms taken away
Is setting a dangerous precedent.
Has just learned what that term means.
And has decided using it to defend their ignorance,
Will gain them personal attention.
The 'dangerous precedent',
Has been in allowing the absence of respect and discipline
To infiltrate the minds of children who are raising children,
Believing the act of marketing sex and decadence
Is going to overnight produce a society of upstanding citizens.
While illiteracy becomes a prerequisite,
To obtaining a Master's Degree in Physics.
The 'dangerous precedent' had already taken effect,
When the building of prisons began to become considered...
As rehabilitation centers at the taxpayers exorbitant expense.
The 'dangerous precedent' began
When the flowing of crime hit the streets.
And anyone expressing an embittered reaction against this...
Was rumored to be 'negative' and disgruntled,
About the truth of a pretentiousness no one sought to face.
But today
People are blaming those in leadership positions,
For not being strong enough to protect their interests.
Or fight courageously to uphold their rights to entitlements.
Yeah!
It's in the 'water'.
It 'has' to be!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Cobbers and Quids
Is youth not less pedantic, less absurd,
Less prone to value things of little worth
In failing to wax wrath about a word
That bears suspicion of a lowly birth?
All words have known their low and vulgar days
Known grime and poverty when they were young;
And many a proud and pompous modern phrase
Was once the plaything of a common tongue.
But as we grow respectable and staid
Mere sound, to middle-age, parades as sense.
Grey slaves of precedent, we grow afraid
Of youth and all its sane inconsequence.
Forgetting words are no god-given things,
With queer intolerance we would insist
In terms to which the mould of ages clings
On purity that never did exist.
Language is not the gift of any god;
Rude tribesmen made it when the race was young;
And as around the weary earth we plod
Still the illiterate enrich the tongue;
And still while careless youth goes gaily rid
Of age's caution, precedent and pence,
Better a cobber who'll lend half a quid
Than all the thrifty pedant's 'commonsense.'
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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This is going right to the police. So, it's a very dangerous precedent.
quote by Floyd Abrams
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A precedent embalms a principle.
quote by Benjamin Disraeli
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Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.
It was a sight surpassing all precedent, and one we never dreamed of seeing.
quote by Howard Carter
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When I won the belt, it was kind of a precedent... The only Canadian to have ever held it.
One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.
As federal lawmakers, we have a responsibility to set a precedent for energy efficient practices.
quote by Greg Walden
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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
quote by Nancy Astor
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I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
quote by George Washington
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Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
quote by Bill Kristol
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The Ten Percent Gospel or Malachi Syndrome
Tithe, Tithe, Tithe!
Your money give to God
Tithe, Tithe, Tithe!
Will your God you rob?
Mix LAW and FAITH together
And set a precedent,
Mix LAW and FAITH together
But start at ten percent!
For me to tithe? it's not of faith
It's like - not eating ham,
For me to tithe? it's not of faith
Don't make the gospel a sham!
Give Freely, Freely, Freely
For, in the Christ you are made alive,
Give Freely, Freely, Freely
And make His ROOD your tithe! ! !
'Freely you have received, freely give.'
Matthew 10: 7-16; Acts 4: 36,37
(The tithe in Malachi was food, somewhere along the line it's been changed to money, most likely
by 'money hungry' pastors who see themselves a as type of Levitical Priesthood, and live like
parasites off the sheep, the 34th of Ezekiel says it all.)
poem by Richard Merrell
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As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.
quote by Kenneth Noland
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Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.
quote by Max Baucus
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It Was Never Contemplated
When old ADAM bit the apple,
And thereafter had to grapple
With hard toil to earn his daily bread by sweat,
There's no doubt that he protested
That his 'rights' had been molested,
And he's probably protesting strongly yet:
'When this garden was created
It was never contemplated
It was never in the schedule or the plan
'Twasn't even dimly hinted
That my living would be stinted,
Or that Work would ever be the lot of man.'
But in spite of protestation
ADAM, with his lone relation,
Was evicted in an arbitrary way,
Even though that resolution
Wasn't in the Constitution,
And his children have been grafting to this day.
But poor ADAM'S old contention
Has become a stock convention
'Mid the ADAMS of the nations ever since,
'Mid the shufflers and the shirkers,
Crusted Tory anti-workers,
They whom nought but 'precedent' can e'er convince.
They're the ADAMS of the race; they're the men that clog the pace,
With their backs upon the vanguard and their eyes upon the rear;
Praising loud their point of view, and regarding owt that's new
With a rabid Tory hatred and a vague old-fashioned fear.
They're the men of yester-year loitering all needless here,
And meandering around and 'round in aimless, endless rings.
Ever ready to resent acts without a precedent,
Such as were not contemplated in the ancient scheme of things.
'O, it was not contemplated!'
'Tis the cry of the belated,
The complaint of all the Old Worlds waterlogged;
Tis the trade-mark of the Tory;
'Tis the declaration hoary;
'Tis the protest of the busted and the bogged.
Mark, whenever it is uttered
By the lips of ancients muttered,
There is wisdom lacking here, at any rate
For, when Tories were created
It was never contemplated
That they ever would attempt to contemplate.
There are many things decided,
Quite by precedent unguided.
It was never contemplated, by the way.
When the scheme of things was shaping,
And mankind emerged from aping,
That he'd ever learn to eat three times a day;
Yet, all precedent unheeding,
Even Tories time their feeding,
And are known to be quite regular at meals;
Though in neolithic ages
'Twas laid down by ancient sages
That a man shall eat when so inclined he feels.
He's the dead weight at the back; he's the log upon the track;
He's the man who shouts the warning when the danger's past and gone;
He's the prophet of the old by defunct traditions hold;
He's the chap who sits and twaddles while the crowd goes marching on.
Of the things uncontemplated in the councils of the dead;
But the nation marches by heedless of his bitter cry
Marches on and contemplates the vital things away ahead.
In the shaping of a nation
Can we crowd all contemplation
Can we plan it in a hurried week or so?
Cease your ancient whiskered story
And observe, O gentle Tory,
We are contemplating matters as we go.
E'en to-day we're contemplating
Matters princip'ly relating
To the shaping of to-morrow's onward way;
And to-morrow ev'ry grafter
Will be forming plans for after;
But we are not harking back to yesterday.
For the future days arranging;
Seeking, planning, ever changing;
Weeding out the old mistakes of yester-year;
Planting now the seed of new things
March the men who dare and do things,
Opening up the unblazed road without a fear.
And, O mark you, gentle Tory,
We shall judge your measures hoary
By the use in this day's scheme they represent;
We shall use them if we want them;
If we don't we shall supplant them,
For we do not care a damn for precedent.
He's discretion at its worst; he a harbinger reversed;
He's the obstinate old party who abhors the new and strange.
He's the man whose ancient eyes ever fail to recognise
That the Law of Man was ever Change, and ever will be Change.
He's a scoffer at the Law; he's a blemish and a flaw;
And he whines as did old ADAM when he lost the realms of bliss.
When they shored him in the cold in the parlous days of old:
'THIS WAS NEVER CONTEMPLATED! YOU'VE NO PRECEDENT FOR THIS!'
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Summertime? 2006 for M lady Ernestine
.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
Although I must confess it seems to me,
this is not how things are supposed to be.
It goes against established precedent.
The months of summer in the past were spent
outdoors in pleasant sunshine happily.
Though not this year it has rained constantly.
I’m left to wonder where the summer went
The global warming warnings have been changed
Now climate change seems to dominate the new
Expert’s opinions have been rearranged.
Each day appears to change their views.
Their arguments with each other ranged
from certainty to I don’t know what is true.
3-Sep-08
http: // blog.myspace.com/poeticpiers
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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