David Starr Jordan è stato un naturalista statunitense.
Fu il principale ittiologo degli inizi del XX secolo. Scrisse 650 articoli e libri su questo tema, oltre ad essere stato il presidente dell'Università dell'Indiana e il primo presidente dell'Università di Stanford.
Fu un attivo pacifista: fu presidente della Fondazione Mondiale per la Pace dal 1910 al 1914.
“There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.”
The Voice of the Scholar (San Francisco, 1903), Ch. IX: "The University and the Common Man", p. 190 https://archive.org/stream/voiceofscholarwi00jorduoft#page/190/mode/2up
“Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Virtue is doing it.”
"Ideals of Stanford", by President David Starr Jordan, in The Land of Sunshine: A Southern California Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Los Angeles, June 1898), p. 11
Variante: "Wisdom is knowing what to do next; Skill is knowing how to do it, and Virtue is doing it."
“The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.”
As quoted in B. C. Forbes, Keys to Success: Personal Efficiency (1918), p. 189
Variante: "The world stands aside for a man who knows where he is going."
As quoted in M. Leonard, The Chaperon and Housemother, Builders of Youth (1947), p. 51
