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

John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,no hell below us, above us only sky,imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries,it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man, imagine all the people, sharing all the world. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Brotherhood | Greed | Hell | Hope | Kill | Life | Life | Need | Nothing | Religion | Will | Wonder | World |

Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.

We are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told what to do by management." In the new knowledge-based economy, people should make their own decision. Managing less is managing better. Close supervision, control and bureaucracy kill the competitive spirit of the company. "Weak managers are the killers of business; they are the job killers. You can't manage self-confidence into people.

Control | Kill | People | Self-confidence | Spirit | Will |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

The use of a mere dozen nuclear weapons ... would be a human catastrophe without parallel. ... Because so few weapons can kill so many people, even far-reaching disarmament proposals would leave us implicated in plans for unprecedented slaughter of innocent people. The sole measure that can free us from this burden is abolition.

Kill | Weapons |

John G. Stoessinger

It has become almost banal to say that the atomic age has fundamentally altered the nature of war. No nuclear power can tell another: “Do as I say or I shall kill you,” but is reduced to saying: “Do as I say or I shall kill us both,” which is an entirely different matter.

Age | Kill | Nature | Power |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.

Harm | Kill | People | Right |

Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek

A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dad the first blow, better not strike at it.

Better | Kill | Slander | Slander |

Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.

Kill |

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches

The religion of the flag promptly replaced the cult of heaven, an old cloud which had already been deflated by the Reformation and reduced to a network of episcopal money boxes. In olden times the fanatical fashion was: 'Long live Jesus! Burn the heretics!' . . . But heretics, after all, were few and voluntary . . . Whereas today vast hordes of men are fired with aim and purpose by cries of ‘Hang the limp turnips! The juiceless lemons! The innocent readers! By the millions, eyes right!’ If anybody doesn’t want to fight or murder, grab ‘em, tear ‘em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives!

Cult | Kill | Men | Money | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Teach | Old |

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches

The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.

Age | Death | Destiny | Dread | Earth | Ends | Enough | Kill | Life | Life | Madness | Man | Music | Old age | Silence | Strength | Time | Tomorrow | Truth | Will | Youth | Youth | Old |

M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity. Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.

Capacity | Character | Control | Desire | Evil | Kill | Life | Life | People | Child | Think |

Luis Buñuel, fully Luis Buñuel Portolés

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

Chance | Kill | Mystery | People |

Margaret Atwood, fully Margaret Eleanor Atwood

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Kill | Men | Will | Afraid |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.

Kill | Friends |

Maltese Proverbs

You must kill the spider to get rid of the cobweb.

Kill |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

Evidence | History | Kill | Truth |

Martin van Creveld

The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.

Fighting | Kill |

Max Jacob, pen name Léon David and Morven le Gaëlique

Friendship is inexplicable, it should not be explained if one doesn't want to kill it.

Kill |

Maxim Gorky, pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov

We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.

Kill | People |

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Kill |

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Kill |