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 Einstein

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure personages is the only thing that can lead us to fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always irresistibly tempts its owners to abuse it.

Abuse | Cause | Character | Deeds | Example | Humanity | Ideas | Money | Selfishness | Wealth | World |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say; it! virtue even has need of limits.

Abuse | Character | Experience | Man | Need | Power | Virtue | Virtue |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Do you never look at yourself when you abuse another person?

Abuse | Character |

Publius Syrus

When you call a man ungrateful you have no words of abuse left.

Abuse | Character | Man | Words |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common.

Abuse | Character | Evil | Understanding | Vice |

Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

Abuse | Character | Man | Nothing | Patience | Thinkers | Will |

Richard Whately

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is truly a wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

Abuse | Character | Envy | Man | Object | Public | Service | Success | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wise |

Benjamin Franklin

Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid: then shalt thou reach the point of happiness and independence shall by thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.

Abuse | Honesty | Riches | Soul | Wisdom | Happiness |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

Even if governmental conduct of business could give us more efficiency instead of less efficiency, the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It would destroy political equality. It would increase rather than decrease abuse and corruption. It would stifle initiative and invention. It would undermine the development of leadership. It would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It would extinguish equality and opportunity. It would dry up the spirit of liberty and progress.

Abuse | Business | Conduct | Corruption | Destroy | Efficiency | Equality | Initiative | Invention | Liberty | Opportunity | People | Progress | Spirit | Wisdom | Business |

Aldo Leopold

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Abuse | Land | Love | Regard | Respect | Wisdom |

John Locke

Another great abuse of words, is the taking them for things.

Abuse | Wisdom | Words |

Marya Mannes

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

Abuse | Earth | Future | Kill | Revenge | Will | Wisdom |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Abuse | Authority | Experience | Man | Nature | Power | Will | Wisdom |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Luxury is... absolutely necessary in monarchies; as it is also in despotic states. In the former, it is the use of liberty; in the latter, it is the abuse of servitude. A slave appointed by his master to tyrannize over other wretches of the same condition, uncertain of enjoying tomorrow the blessings of today, has no other felicity that that of glutting the pride, the passions, and the voluptuousness of the present moment.

Abuse | Blessings | Liberty | Luxury | Present | Pride | Servitude | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Cynthia Ozick

Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.

Abuse | Culture | Language | Wisdom | Words |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

Abuse | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Joan Chittister, fully Sister Joan D. Chittister

Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.

Abuse | Children | Commitment | Conscience | God | Individual | Law | Morality | Obedience | Sin | Soul |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex.

Abuse | Better | Humanity | Man |

Ellen Goodman

We are at ease with a moral judgment made against someone’s private sin - lust or greed. We are much less comfortable judging someone’s public ethic - those decisions that can lead to such outcomes as aggression, the abuse of the environment, the neglect of the needy.

Abuse | Aggression | Greed | Judgment | Lust | Neglect | Public | Sin |

Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |