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About this quote

What does it mean?
Stubbornly sticking to a wrong cause is the same as steadfastly sticking to a right one; the behavior is identical, only the moral value differs.
In plain terms
Being stubborn in a bad cause is the same as being constant in a good cause.
What can you take from it?
Check your cause before valuing your persistence.

Where it applies

  • political debates
  • workplace projects
  • personal habits

Putting it to work

  • evaluate goals
  • assess loyalty

Questions to consider

  • Is your persistence helping or hindering?
  • What makes a cause worth defending?

Another view

It assumes we can always objectively know if a cause is good or bad.

More from Sir Thomas Browne

  1. Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.

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  2. All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

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  3. Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished …

    Permalink to quote #11

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