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

E. Stanley Jones, fully Eli Stanley Jones

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. It gives us something to sharpen our souls on. The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future. If we saw all good things which are coming to us, we would sit down and denigrate. If we saw all the evil things, we would be paralyzed. How merciful is God is to lift the curtain on today; and as we get strength today to meet tomorrow, then to lift the curtain on the morrow. He is a considerate God.

Adventure | Anticipation | Dread | Evil | Future | God | Good | Life | Life | Sense | Strength | Tomorrow | God |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else… Nothing has a more diverse and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections.

Complacency | Evil | Individual | Nature | Nothing | Responsibility | Society | Understanding | Society |

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

I believe that art is the only way by which an evil man can attain a realm of perfect liberation without becoming an entirely different person. While religion spurns evil men… art permits them to enter its realm, as long as they believe in it.

Art | Evil | Man | Men | Religion | Art |

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 |

Mary Ellen Kelly

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.

Evil |

Laurenti Magesa

The worst type of sin, in fact the only “mortal sin” which has enslaved man for the greater part of history, is the institutionalized sin. Under the institution, vice appears to be, or is actually turned into, virtue. Apathy toward evil is thus engendered; recognition of sin becomes totally effaced; sinful institutions become absolutized, almost idolized, and sin becomes absolutely moral.

Apathy | Evil | History | Man | Mortal | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Thomas Merton

When one has too many answers, and when on ejoins a chorus of others chanting the same slogans, there is, it seems to me, a danger that one is trying to evade the loneliness of a conscience that realizes itself to be in an inescapably evil situation. We are under judgment.

Conscience | Danger | Evil | Judgment | Loneliness | Danger |

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 |

Nikhilananda, fully Swami Nikhilananda, born Dinesh Chandra Das Gupta NULL

The challenge of aggressive evil can be met only by the power of aggressive good.

Challenge | Evil | Good | Power |

William Penn

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Evil | Man | People | Sin |

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

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Death | Evil | Mankind | Providence |

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

In all conflict with evil, the method to be used is love and not force. When we use evil methods to defeat evil, it is evil that wins.

Defeat | Evil | Force | Love | Method |

Fritz A. Rothschild

Fear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers,” awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. That is why awe is compatible with both love and joy.

Anticipation | Awe | Evil | Expectation | Fear | Good | Hope | Humility | Joy | Love | Mystery | Object | Pain | Reason | Sense | Surrender | Wonder | World | Expectation |

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Creation is not an instantaneous act, but is an eternal process. The immanence of God which follows from this hypothesis is the pledge that evil and error, ugliness and imperfection are not ultimate. Evil has reference to the distance which good has to traverse. Error is the stage on the pathway to truth.

Error | Eternal | Evil | God | Good | Hypothesis | Imperfection | Truth | God |

Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel

It is precisely the conflict between the good or divine principle, on the one hand, and the evil or adverse principle on the other, which constitutes the meaning of human life and human history, from the beginning to the end of time.

Beginning | Evil | Good | History | Life | Life | Meaning | Time |

Haile Selassie

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Better | Evil | History | Indifference | Justice | Silence |

Shlomo of Karlin, fully Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi of Karlin NULL

What is the worst thing the Evil Urge can achieve? To make man forget that he is the son of a king.

Evil | Man |