A Politician On The Knife's Edge

Was directed here to learn that the Rambam got himself involved in an American election campaign in Minnesota:

Senator Coleman closed with two quotes, one from the Jewish sage Maimonides and one from Mother Teresa. Senator Coleman quoted Maimonides' admonition that "A person should see himself and the whole world as being on a knife edge, precisely and exquisitely balanced." With one good deed, Maimonides says, a person "can alter the balance of his life and the whole world to the side of blessing and life." I doubt I'll hear a politician quoting Maimonides again any time soon. It was a terrific performance.

(Kippah tip: Jennifer Rubin)

Funny though, I'm having trouble locating the Maimonidesean source.

In the meantime, see this:

"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see," Davies adds, "even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life -- almost contrived -- you might say a 'put-up job'."

- Dr. Paul Davies

And the Talmud notes:

"Sharpen the knife while the ox is fallen" (Talmud Bavli Shabbat 32a)

UPDATE

The revolutionary lives on the knife's edge. The question that harasses him
is, in fact, not merely the moral or religious one of whether he may kill; his
quandary has nothing at all to do, as has at times been said, with 'selling his
soul to the devil' in order to bring the revolution to victory. His entanglement
in the situation is here just the tension between end and means. I cannot
conceive anything real corresponding to the saying that the end 'sanctifies' the
means; but I mean something which is real in the highest sense of the term when
I say that the means profane, actually make meaningless, the end, that is, its
realization! What is realized is the farther from the goal that was set the more
out of accord with it is the method by which it was realized. The 'ensuring' of
the revolution may only drain its heart's blood. The responsibility which
results from these presuppositions must penetrate most deeply in the leader who
is summoned to make the watchword of the spirit into the watchword of the event.
But none of those who are led can neglect responsibility save by flight from
self-recollection, that is, by the atrophy of the spirit within. Here again the
true front runs through the centre.

"From Recollection of a Death" by Martin Buber
[This essay was originally written by Buber in 1929 as a memorial to one of Buber's closest friends and intellectual companions, Gustav Landauer]