Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Paul Eldridge

The ideals men die for often become the prejudices their descendants kill for.

Ideals | Kill | Men |

Robert Burton

He that stabs another can kill his body; but he that stabs himself, kills his own soul.

Body | Kill | Soul |

Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.

Kill | People | Wonder |

Thomas Carlyle

The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once.

Kill |

Thomas Traherne

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Death | Kill |

William Shakespeare

Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance and an irregular life do as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang or poison or drown themselves.

Body | Destroy | Intemperance | Kill | Life | Life | Men |

Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Kill | Knowledge | Mystery | Sense | Wonder |

Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.

Kill | Poverty | Weapons |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I have often asked myself whether I am not more heavily obligated to the hardest years of my life than to any others. As my inmost nature teaches me, whatever is necessary as seen from the heights and in the sense of a great economy is also the useful par excellence: one should not only bear it, one should love it. Amor fati: that is my inmost nature. And as for my long sickness, do I not owe it indescribably more than I owe to my health? I owe it a higher health, one which is made stronger by whatever does not kill it. I also owe my philosophy to it. Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit... Only great pain, that long, slow pain in which we are burned with green wood, as it were - pain which takes its time - only this forces us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put away all trust, all good-naturedness, all that would veil, all mildness, all that is medium - things in which formerly we may have found our humanity. I doubt that such pain makes us "better," but I know that it makes us more profound.

Doubt | Kill | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Pain | Philosophy | Sense | Time |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

Kill |

Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson

When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.

Kill | Peace | Time | Will | Forgive |

Harriet Tubman

Never wound a snake; kill it.

Kill |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for sport, for food, or for knowledge.

Kill | Man | Nature | Relationship |

James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

Death | Kill | Man | Torture |

James Rachels

Is it worse to kill someone than to let someone die? It seems obvious to common sense that it is worse. We allow people to die, for example, when we fail to contribute money to famine-relief efforts; but even if we feel somewhat guilty, we do not consider ourselves murderers. Nor do we feel like accessories to murder when we fail to give blood, sign an organ-donor card, or do any of the other things that could save lives. Common sense tells us that, while we may not kill people, our duty to give them aid is much more limited.

Aid | Common Sense | Duty | Kill | Money | Murder | People | Sense | Murder |

Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall

If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls.

Kill |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?

Conquest | Death | Enemy | Kill | Liberty | Life | Life | Price | Right | Slavery | War |

Jim Rohn

Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it.

Kill | Waste |