Great Throughts Treasury

"Everything in this world changes; only God remains the same forever. If mankind will realize this truth, then we can avert disaster by coming together with faith in God and living in unity and compassion. Do not live divided. With compassion for each other, live in unity and truth, in the presence of God. Live according to justice and conscience, respecting the lives and bodies of all others as your own, and knowing the hunger and the suffering of others as your own. Have patience, contentment, trust in God, and live praising God at all times, and peace will be easy." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

"Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising." - Nāgārjuna, fully Acharya Nāgārjuna NULL

"Down the millennia of its existence, Hinduism has made a priceless contribution to the collective religious life of mankind through the remarkable findings of her many brilliant mystics and philosophers, as set forth in a voluminous literature. Perhaps, however, her most significant contribution to the universal body of religious inquiry is the persistent, unshakable belief that union with the Divine is attainable while one is still on earth. Moreover, any man in India is at liberty to pursue salvation after his own fashion with no danger of finding himself at some point branded as heretic. Indeed, heresy in Hinduism is virtually impossible, for as the authoritative Upanishads firmly state: “Reality of One though sages call it by different names." - Nancy Wilson Ross

"A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power." - Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau

"If i can't do what i want to do then my job is to not do what i don't want to do. It's not the same thing but it's the best i can do. If i can't have what i want . . . then my job is to want what i've got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want. Since i can't go where i need to go . . . then i must . . . go where the signs point through always understanding parallel movement isn't lateral. When i can't express what i really feel i practice feeling what i can express and none of it is equal. I know but that's why mankind alone among the animals learns to cry." - Nikki Giovanni, fully Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni

"Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life." - Nikola Tesla

"If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it." - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"There are many moments in friendship, as in love, when silence is beyond words. The faults of our friend may be clear to us, but it is well to seem to shut our eyes to them. Friendship is usually treated by the majority of mankind as a tough and everlasting thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But this is an exceedingly great and foolish error; it may die in an hour of a single unwise word; its conditions of existence are that it should be dealt with delicately and tenderly, being as it is a sensitive plant and not a roadside thistle. We must not expect our friend to be above humanity." - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us." - P. J. O'Rourke

"Every man, in proportion to his virtue, considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess. Every man, in proportion to his wisdom, sees the manner in which it is his duty to employ the resources which the consent of mankind has entrusted to his discretion." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"In proportion as mankind becomes wise — yes, in exact proportion to that wisdom — should be the extinction of the unequal system under which they now subsist. Government is, in fact, the mere badge of their depravity. They are so little aware of the inestimable benefits of mutual love as to indulge, without thought, and almost without motive, in the worst excesses of selfishness and malice. Hence, without graduating human society into a scale of empire and subjection, its very existence has become impossible. It is necessary that universal benevolence should supersede the regulations of precedent and prescription, before these regulations can safely be abolished. Meanwhile, their very subsistence depends on the system of injustice and violence, which they have been devised to palliate." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, Thou shalt not kill, is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long. " - Peter De Vries

"If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side; and, since this struggle cannot go on forever, you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economic, social and political." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"Knowledge is an immense power. Man must know. But we already know much! What if that knowledge — and only that — should become the possession of all? Would not science itself progress in leaps, and cause mankind to make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed?" - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"Relatively speaking, law is a product of modern times. For ages and ages mankind lived without any written law, even that graved in symbols upon the entrance stones of a temple. During that period, human relations were simply regulated by customs, habits, and usages, made sacred by constant repetition, and acquired by each person in childhood, exactly as he learned how to obtain his food by hunting, cattle-rearing, or agriculture… Side by side with these customs, necessary to the life of societies and the preservation of the race, other desires, other passions, and therefore other habits and customs, are evolved in human association. The desire to dominate others and impose one's own will upon them... Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seemed just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames up in every class of society, in every possible environment, in the very bosom of the family. ... Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted; they perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath, and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial, and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"The stars of the next acts of the great historical drama are going to be — besides Europe, the Americas, and Russia — the renascent great cultures of India, China, Japan, Indonesia, and the Islamic world. This epochal shift has already started…. Its effects upon the future history of mankind are going to be incomparably greater than those of the alliances and disalliances of the Western governments and ruling groups." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

"The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are." - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Science dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness." - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace

"In the world today many people think that one can do without religion, and that they themselves have outgrown religion by reason of their evolution. Many have no religious belief, and therefore the world has never been in a more chaotic condition. No doubt one finds in tradition and in history that in the name of religion the selfishness and ignorance of mankind have been given free reign. This is the reason why man, revolting against this state of things, has forsaken religion and forgotten that spirit which, in the name of religion, has also played its part in the world." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Belief and disbelief have divided mankind into so many sects, blinding its eyes to the vision of the oneness of all life." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semi religious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed. Despite this knowledge, statesmen in responsible positions on both sides continue to employ the well-known technique of seeking to intimidate and demoralize the opponent by marshaling superior military strength. They do so even though such a policy entails the risk of war and doom. Not one statesman in a position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise of peace, the course of supranational security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into flame, exact their victims… [These were his last words]" - Albert Einstein

"The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn." - R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

"The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed." - Albert Einstein

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." - Albert Einstein

"We must learn the difficult lesson that the future of Mankind will only be tolerable when our course, in world affairs as in others, is based upon justice and law rather than the threat of naked power." - Albert Einstein

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." - Albert Einstein

"I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but ourselves." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called visions, the whole so-called spirit-world, death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"What is needed in the present plight of mankind is not more science but a change of heart that shall move mankind to devote to constructive and peaceful purposes." - Ralph Barton Perry

"Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"Progress of mankind is progress of mind and intellect." - Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale

"From a long view of the history of mankind " - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"Ever since the world began it has been the belief of mankind that desolate places are the special haunt of supernatural beings... In the olden times in our own fair England, and not so long ago either, there was not a wild and unfrequented place which had not got its special spirit." - Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies

"The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless." - Richard Whately

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. ." - Robertson Davies

"He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind." - Robertson Davies

"This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap." - Robertson Davies

"We are approaching a millennium; the year 2000 draws on apace. The last time mankind had this experience a chaos comparable to our own was observable in many parts of the world; monsters and portents were reported from all quarters of the globe. We need not believe in these monsters and portents as actualities any more than we need believe the reports of flying saucers today; what is significant is that men yielded to an inner compulsion to fancy such things, and in this sense they were artistic creations rooted in fear much as are the pictures and images which we have been discussing." - Robertson Davies

"God's Garden - God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown, But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live, And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end." - Robert Frost

"Mud is mankind in the moulding, Heaven's mystery unfolding. " - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"I saw a star slide down the sky Blinding the north as it went by Too buring and too quick to hold Too lovely to be bought or sold Good only to make wishes on And then forever to be gone. " - Sara Teasdale, born Sara Trevor Teasdale, aka Sara Teasdale Filsinger

"I consider all proposals for government action with an open mind before voting 'no.'" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"It's time we reduced the federal budget and left the family budget alone." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The very key to our success has been our ability, foremost among nations, to preserve our lasting values by making change work for us rather than against us." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan