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

Albert Barnes

It is not the profession of religion which creates the obligation for the performance of duty; for that existed before any such profession was made. The profession of religion only recognizes the obligation.

Duty | Obligation | Religion | Wisdom |

Horace Bushnell

The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.

Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |

Horace Bushnell

Measure obligation by inherent ability!

Ability | Obligation | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men, shall we be able to speak of mankind as civilized.

Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Obligation | Wisdom |

Henry Fielding

It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.

Friend | Men | Obligation | Wisdom |

Edward Howard Griggs

We crave freedom, but freedom is never an end in itself; it is a means to be used for further aims. Its value lies in the extent to which it can assist the development of life. To possess freedom with no life for which to use it is but the bitterest farce. Life never means complete freedom, and every action and relation is an added bond. Life is to be attained, not through a non-moral freedom of caprice, but through a glad welcoming and loyal fulfillment of every bond and obligation which comes in the daily path of life.

Action | Aims | Freedom | Fulfillment | Life | Life | Means | Obligation | Wisdom | Value |

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war - we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.

Age | Obligation | Peace | Restraint | Strength | War | Wisdom |

Lord Francis Jeffrey

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

Obligation | Wisdom |

Robert C. Pooley, fully Robert Cecil Pooley

Our responsibility as educators is to teach youth to have respect for those who differ from the customary ways as well as for those who conform. In simpler words, we have a profound obligation both to education and to society itself to support and strengthen the right to be different, and to create a sound respect for intellectual superiority.

Education | Obligation | Respect | Responsibility | Right | Society | Sound | Superiority | Teach | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Respect | Youth |

Joseph Parker

Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes only of a religious stock - from consciousness of obligation and dependence upon God.

Character | Consciousness | Dependence | God | Indispensable | Obligation | Self | Self-denial | Wisdom |

William Gilmore Simms

To feel oppressed by obligation is only to prove that we are incapable of a proper sentiment of gratitude. To receive favors from the unworthy is to admit that our selfishness is superior to our pride.

Gratitude | Obligation | Pride | Receive | Selfishness | Sentiment | Wisdom |

Dhyani Ywahoo

Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all our relations the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony.

Beauty | Harmony | Obligation | Power | Prayer | Sense | Sound | Wisdom |

Louis K. Anspacher, fully Louis Kannan Anspacher

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.

Dependence | Man | Marriage | Obligation | Woman |

Harold Laski, fully Harold Joseph Laski

A moral obligation is no less compelling because it may end in failure.

Failure | Obligation |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Cooperation | Evil | Good | Obligation | System |

New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL

It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.

Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |

Simone Weil

A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds... An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

Existence | Force | Obligation | Right | Worth |