Great Throughts Treasury

"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten." -

"What madness is it for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him." -

"Everybody has enemies. to have an enemy is quite another thing. One must be somebody to have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

"Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend." - Jeremy Taylor

"Art hath no enemy but ignorance." - John Taylor, aka 'Water Poet'

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you." -

"Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?" -

"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

"A single enemy is one too many." - Asher ben Yehiel

"He that lives in perpetual suspicion lives the life of a sentinel never relieved, whose business is to look out for and expect an enemy, which is an evil not short of perishing by him." -

"Believe me, a thousand friends suffice thee not; In a single enemy thou has more than enough." - Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, simply known as Ali NULL

"Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading. " - Benedict of Nursia, aka Saint Benedict of Nursia NULL

"Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations. This being the case, the propagandist is likely to find that his suggestions have fallen on fertile soil so long as he delivers his message with an eye to the existing attitudes and intellectual level of his audience." - J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown

"The enemy is brownness and whiteness, maleness and femaleness. The enemy is our urgent need to stereotype and close off people, places, and events into isolated categories. Hatred, distrust, irresponsibility, unloving, classism, sexism, and racism, in their myriad forms, cloud our vision and isolate us… We close off avenues of communication and vision so that individual and communal trust, responsibility, loving, and knowing are impossible." -

"The greatest enemy of justice is privilege." -

"Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions… The propagandist must insist on the purity of his own intentions and, at the same time, hurl accusations at his enemy." - Jacques Ellul

"Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard – every action of oneself by another." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher." -

"I tell the truth: your enemy is also your friend – his presence makes your life fuller and richer." - Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal

"To make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy… we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague." - William James

"Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Resolve not to be poor, whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness, it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me, and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness; that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then?" - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed." - Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL

"The great enemy of the soul is not trial but sadness, which is the bleeding wound of self-love." - Francis Xavier Lasance, fully The Reverend Francis Xavier Lasance

"The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles mine." - Stanislaw Lec, fully Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz

"The advantages of the enemy will have little value if we permit them to impair our resolution." -

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend." - Abraham Lincoln

"In frontless war where there are no clear lines on the map to show victory and defeat, the only true measure of progress must be political and nonquantifiable: the impact on the enemy’s will to continue the fight." - Edward Luttwak, fully Edward Nicolae Luttwak

"Any manifest error on the part of an enemy should make us suspect some stratagem." - Douglas MacArthur

"A prince is further esteemed when he is a true friend or a true enemy, when, that is, he declares himself without reserve in favor of some one or against another. This policy is always more useful than remaining neutral." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you." -

"Complacency is the enemy. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency. Our attitude towards ourselves should be “insatiable in learning” and towards others to be “tireless in teaching.”" - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"Cruelest enemy – Yourself!" - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine

"The animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of Government." - Thomas Paine

"True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

"Cerebration is the enemy of originality in art." - Martin Ritt

"Idleness is the enemy of the soul. And therefore, at fixed times, the brothers ought to be occupied in manual labour; and again, at fixed times, in sacred reading." -

"Have you ever considered how dreadful it would be if our lives had no appointed end but went on forever? Can you imagine that as far as the eye can see into the future we should remain enmeshed in all the desires and troubles of this life and that all the ensuing envy, hatred and malice, our own and other people’s should continue to pile up undiminished? If you have ever considered how intolerable the burden of our life would be without the understood certainty that it has an appointed end, you know that death comes to all, even the most fortunate, not as an enemy but as a deliverance." - Albert Schweitzer

"These are our times and our responsibilities. Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth, from whom all life comes. In order to do this we must recognize the enemy -- the one within us. We must begin with ourselves." - Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah

"Hate is still the main enemy of the human race, the fuel that heats the furnaces of genocide." - Isidor Feinstein Stone

"Revolution is only true revolution if it is a continuous struggle – not just an external struggle against an enemy, but an inner struggle, fighting and subduing all negative aspects which hinder or do damage to the course of the revolution. In this light, revolution is… a mighty symphony of victory over the enemy and over oneself." - Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo

"The flea bites, hops, and bites, again, nimbly avoiding the foot that would crush him. He does not seek to kill his enemy at a blow, but to bleed him and feed on him, to plague and bedevil him, to keep him from resting and to destroy his nerve and his morale." - Robert Taber

"Many people think it impossible for guerillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish who inhabits it." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"Our strategy is “pit one against ten,” and our tactics are “pit ten against one” – This is one of our fundamental principles for gaining mastery over the enemy." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"Enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." - Francis Maitland Balfour

"No one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy - the cause of my own disastrous fate." -