Topic

Example

Example in this collection is the most persuasive form of argument. Washington's example-has-a-powerful-influence-whether-good-or-bad is the bidirectional warning: example teaches in both directions simultaneously, and the bad examples are as instructive as the good ones. Vergil's believe-an-expert is the epistemological version: experience is a form of evidence, and those who have it are worth attending to. France on well-said-things-being-worth-copying is here because repetition of good examples is not theft but transmission — the mechanism by which a tradition maintains itself. Caesar on experience as the teacher of all things elevates example from rhetoric to epistemology: what we have witnessed is the most reliable form of knowledge available. Rogers on learning by reading or by association with smarter people is the practical taxonomy: example comes through text or through proximity, and both work. Gibran on learning tolerance from the intolerant returns: the negative example teaches as surely as the positive, and sometimes more durably.