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

Adam Smith

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

Defense | Government | Property | Reality | Security |

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fully Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

Life | Life | Misfortune | Position | Property | Superiority | Afraid |

Aristotle NULL

It is in the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Beginning | Desire | Men | Nature | Property | Reform |

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

A man can know nothing of mankind without knowing something of himself. Self-knowledge is the property of that man whose passions have their full play, but who ponders over their results.

Knowing | Knowledge | Man | Mankind | Nothing | Play | Property | Self | Self-knowledge |

Charles Caleb Colton

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

Calamity | Death | Disease | Good | Grave | Health | Malice | Misfortune | Nothing | Property | Reputation | Respect | Riches | World | Riches | Respect | Friends |

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife or his property without paying for it. We were taught that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.

Disgrace | Good | Man | People | Property | Shame | Spirit | Truth | Wife | Will |

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

Our fathers gave us many laws, which they have learned from their fathers; these laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us; that we should never break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie, that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife, or his property without paying for it. We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything and that he never forgets; that hereafter He will give every man a spirit home according to his desserts - if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he was bad, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.

Disgrace | Good | Man | Men | People | Property | Shame | Spirit | Truth | Wife | Will |

Edmund Burke

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.

Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Society |

Edmund Burke

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned into it), are the natural securities for this transmission.

Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Distinction | Family | Possessions | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wealth | Society |

Edward Gibbon

In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade.

Art | Conquest | Duty | Freedom | Love | Property | Public | War |

Edward Gibbon

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.

Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |

Francis Bacon

All the crimes on earth do not destroy so much of the human race, nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.

Destroy | Earth | Human race | Property | Race |

George Bernard Shaw

Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.

Destroy | Enemy | Freedom | Good | Honor | Hypocrisy | Law | Morality | Order | Power | Property | Wisdom |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.

Property |

Immanuel Kant

What else can the freedom of the will be but autonomy, that is, the property of the will to be a law unto itself?

Freedom | Law | Property | Will |

James Madison

A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species; where arbitrary tax invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied by an unfeeling policy as another spur; in violation of that sacred property which heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

Government | Heaven | Labor | Man | Policy | Property | Repose | Reward | Sacred | Security | Government |

James Madison

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.

Cause | Excess | Government | Liberty | Man | Possessions | Power | Property | Rights | Safe | Government |

James Madison

The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

Property | Society |

Jeremy Bentham

Property and law are born together, and i.e. together. Before laws were made there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases.

Law | Property |