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

James Boswell

It is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another.

Character | Conscience | Man | Rights |

William Ellery Channing

The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other words, the same inward principle which teaches the former bears witness to the latter Duties and rights must stand and fall together.

Character | Duty | Rights | Sense | Witness | Words |

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson

[Suicide note] - Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Character | Death | Grief | Heart | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pain | Power | Rights | Service | Suicide | Usefulness |

Moritz Güdemann

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

Character | Men | Rights | Surrender | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Character | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Rights | Sacred | Truths |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

Character | Rights |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

The attempted transformation of the Indian by the white man and the chaos that has resulted are but the fruits of the white man’s disobedience of a fundamental and spiritual law. “Civilization” has been thrust upon me since the days of reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love of truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas. For after all the great religions have been preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in fine books and embellished in fine language with finer covers, man - all man - is still confronted with the Great Mystery.

Books | Character | Civilization | Disobedience | Faith | Generosity | God | Honesty | Justice | Language | Law | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Reverence | Rights | Sense | Truth | God |

Edward Sanford Martin

Self-respect is at the bottom of all good manners. They are the expression of discipline, of good-will, of respect for other people's rights and comfort and feelings.

Character | Comfort | Discipline | Feelings | Good | Manners | People | Respect | Rights | Self | Will | Respect |

John T. McNicholas, fully John Timothy McNicholas

The God-given rights of parents are not understood or are ignored by our secularist educators and by many school administrators who, in the delusion of sovereignty, act as though they, not the parents, have complete control of the education of the child.

Character | Control | Delusion | Education | God | Parents | Rights |

Robert J. McCracken, D.D.

The greatest danger that faces this country is the danger of moral lassitude - liberty turned to license, rights demanded and duties shirked, the moral sense deteriorating, the traditions and standards of the nation weakened, the spiritual forces within it losing ground.

Character | Danger | Liberty | Rights | Sense | Danger |

Pasquier Quesnel

Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.

Character | Rights | Zeal |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

Character | Humanity | Liberty | Man | Morality | Nature | Rights | Surrender | Will |

William Graham Sumner

Socialists are filled with the enthusiasm of equality... Equality of possession or of rights and equality before the law are diametrically opposed to each other. The object of equality before the law is to make the state entirely neutral.

Character | Enthusiasm | Equality | Law | Object | Rights |